Dr. Adolf Zsigmondy, aka Adolph Zsigmondy (24 April 1816 in

Pozsony Bratislava (German: ''Pressburg'', Hungarian: ''Pozsony'') is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the Slovakia, Slovak Republic and the fourth largest of all List of cities and towns on the river Danube, cities on the river Danube. ...

(),

Kingdom of Hungary The Kingdom of Hungary was a monarchy in Central Europe that existed for nearly a millennium, from 1000 to 1946 and was a key part of the Habsburg monarchy from 1526-1918. The Principality of Hungary emerged as a Christian kingdom upon the Coro ...

– 23 June 1880 in

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

Austria-Hungary Austria-Hungary, also referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the Habsburg Monarchy, was a multi-national constitutional monarchy in Central Europe#Before World War I, Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. A military ...

) was a

dentist A dentist, also known as a dental doctor, dental physician, dental surgeon, is a health care professional who specializes in dentistry, the branch of medicine focused on the teeth, gums, and mouth. The dentist's supporting team aids in provi ...

of Hungarian origin who lived in

. He is best known for inventing the idea of charting teeth on the Zsigmondy-cross (named after him). This is the basis of the presently used marking method recommended by the FDI. He was also the first to describe the contact and wear of the approximal side of the teeth. He continued to develop the cohesive gold fillings. His eldest son, Ottó Zsigmondy, was also a dentist. His more limited professional field of research was the preserving dentistry. He used sodium-superoxide for widening the

root canal A root canal is the naturally occurring anatomic space within the root of a tooth. It consists of the pulp chamber (within the coronal part of the tooth), the main canal(s), and more intricate anatomical branches that may connect the root c ...

and he made permanent fillings of black hard

gutta percha Gutta-percha is a tree of the genus '' Palaquium'' in the family Sapotaceae, which is primarily used to create a high-quality latex of the same name. The material is rigid, naturally biologically inert, resilient, electrically nonconductive, a ...

. On the basis of observations carried out on himself he described the two-phase or temporal mastication called after him. He was also much engaged with professional politics, in his publications he strove for recognition of dentistry as an organic part of medical science. Adolf Zsigmondy's second son,

Emil Zsigmondy Emil Zsigmondy (11 August 1861 – 6 August 1885) was an Austrian physician and mountaineer. Life Zsigmondy's parents were Hungarians: Adolf Zsigmondy, born in Pozsony, and Irma von Szakmáry, born in Martonvásár. Zsigmondy was an excellent a ...

, was a physician. Both Ottó and Emil Zsigmondy were well-known mountaineers; they took part in the first climb of the

Meije La Meije is a mountain in the Massif des Écrins range, located at the border of the Hautes-Alpes and Isère '' départements''. It overlooks the nearby village of La Grave, a mountaineering centre and ski resort, well known for its off-piste ...

by the east arête in July 1885, but Emil was killed on another attempted climb of the Meije the following month. Adolf Zsigmondy's third son,

Richard Adolf Zsigmondy Richard Adolf Zsigmondy (; 1 April 1865 – 23 September 1929) was an Austrian-born chemist. He was known for his research in colloids, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1925, as well as for co-inventing the slit- ultramic ...

, won the

Nobel Prize in Chemistry The Nobel Prize in Chemistry () is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outst ...

in 1925. His fourth son, Karl Zsigmondy, was a mathematician, after whom

Zsigmondy's theorem In number theory, Zsigmondy's theorem, named after Karl Zsigmondy, states that if a>b>0 are coprime integers, then for any integer n \ge 1, there is a prime number ''p'' (called a ''primitive prime divisor'') that divides a^n-b^n and does not divi ...

is named.

References

1816 births 1880 deaths Austrian dentists Hungarian dentists Hungarian inventors Inventors from Austria-Hungary People from Bratislava Health professionals from Vienna 19th-century dentists People from the Austrian Empire {{Hungary-academic-bio-stub