Cornelia M. Thompson
Cornelia M. Thompson was born in 1899 into a family of dentists. Her father Peter Holmes Morrison graduated from the Missouri Dental College in 1890; her grandfather, William Newton Morrison is credited with the introduction of the gold crown in 1869. Cornelia Thompson was the sole woman to graduate in the Washington University School of Dentistry’s class of 1922.
She holds the distinction of being the first woman graduate of the Washington University School of Dentistry to complete the four-year curriculum; the first woman pedodontist in the St. Louis area, the first pedodontist in the St. Louis area to fill primary teeth, and only the third woman to be accepted as a fellow of the American College of Dentists.
Thompson directed the Dental Health Division of the St. Louis County Department of Health from 1963 until her retirement in 1971. During her career, Thompson served as president of the American Association of Women Dentists, the Missouri Unit of the American Society of Dentistry for Children, and the West District Greater St. Louis Dental Society.