Sheldon Friel

Ernest Sheldon Friel (1888 – 2 February 1970), was an Irish dentist who was the first specialist orthodontist to practise in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the second in Europe,

Academic and clinical career Friel studied at Trinity College, Dublin, graduating in 1908 and receiving a master's degree in dental science in 1909. During this period he also undertook specialist orthodontic studies under the father of modern orthodontics, Edward Angle, in the United States. In 1909 he established an orthodontic practice in Dublin, the first in the British Isles. In 1910 he was appointed as Lecturer in Orthodontics at Trinity, receiving a Doctor of Science degree in 1928. In 1941 the college created the first professorship in orthodontics in Europe and appointed Friel to the position. For many years following this he was the only professor of orthodontics in the British Isles.

Friel was a pioneer in the use of stainless steel, rather than the previously preferred gold, for the manufacture of orthodontic devices. of the European Orthodontic Society from 1935 to 1937, and of the Odontological Section of the Royal Society of Medicine in 1949. and in 1951 of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. and in 1960 he became the first person outside North America to receive the Ketcham Award from the American Board of Orthodontics.

Legacy Three years after Friel's death his family provided funding to the European Orthodontic Society for the annual Sheldon Friel Memorial Lecture.