He looked ahead to help kids’ teeth
Thomas K. Barber co-wrote an influential article in the late 1950s that advocated early and proactive orthodontics work on children based on projections of how their adult teeth would come in. A longtime professor and later an adjunct faculty member at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s dental school, Dr. Barber, 84, died Thursday, July 24, in California of complications following heart surgery, UIC spokesman William Bike said. He was a resident of Arroyo Grande, Calif. Dr. Barber received his dental degree and a master’s in pediatric dentistry from UIC in 1949. Two years later, he joined the school’s faculty and in 1965 was named head of its Department of Pediatric Dentistry. With UIC colleague Earl Renfroe, an orthodontic specialist, he wrote a 1957 article for the Journal of the American Dental Association that stressed the need for “interceptive orthodontics”—guiding the shape of a child’s bite and adult teeth formation at an early age.
