Dr. Maurice William was born in Russia in 1881 and emigrated to the Unied States as a child. Early on a socialist and eventually "Casting about for a career, William was advised: 'Become a dentist, comrade. Under the most perfect system of society, there will still be rotten teeth.'”

In 1920, he published The Social Interpretation of History, a book that found its way to China and contributed to Sun Yat-sen’s developing principles of social and economic reform that  led to the revolutionary overthrow of the ancient Chinese imperial regime. 

For a brief history of a pioneering dentist who had the courage to put his money where his mouth was [he self-published] and had a vision of, if not a perfect, at least a better world, click on http://www.international.ucla.edu/print.asp?parentid=2813.