Newsweek

Female Scientist Who Changed Dental Care Honored

Sumita Mitra made a product dentists and their patients love, which almost never happens.
On Australia's National Smile Day, clown doctor, Dr. B. Looney, uses a giant toothbrush to clean the teeth on the face at the entrance to Luna Park in Sydney in 2010.
GettyImages-98206683

She wasn’t aiming to make  history. But in the late 1990s,  when Sumita Mitra, a chemist at 3M, began to use nanotechnology to improve dental fillings, that’s exactly what happened. Now found in dental offices—and virtually every mouth—her fillings are one of those life-changing innovations we take for granted. 

spoke with

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from Newsweek

Newsweek8 min read
A Life of Crime: America’s Migrant-Smuggling Teens
AMERICAN TEENS ARE SMUGGLING MIGRANTS illegally into the United States at alarming rates. And law enforcement officials told Newsweek that money is the No. 1 reason that juveniles are entering into transnational crime. Human smuggling is defined by t
Newsweek14 min read
Trouble in Paradise
ON A CARIBBEAN ISLAND JUST 220 miles from the shore of the U.S. Virgin Islands, a black-clad Chinese security guard swept an arm at more than a thousand acres of woodland and a glittering, aqua-green marine reserve beyond. “It’s like a small country,
Newsweek1 min read
Protest Panic
Manon McCollum shares an emotional moment with his mother Kristin on May 1, explaining through the window of Fordham University’s Lincoln Center lobby that he may soon be arrested for his part in pro-Palestinian protests. Members of the group said th

Related Books & Audiobooks