Charles Stent Charles Stent Charles Stent (1807–1885) was a 19th-century English dentist notable for his advances in the field of denture making. In 1847, Edwin Truman introduced gutta-percha as a material for making dental impressions; however, this was unsatisfactory for several reasons, including its tendency to distort upon removal from the patient's mouth, and to shrink upon cooling. In 1856, Stent added several other materials to the gutta-percha, notably stearine, which markedly improved the plasticity of the material as well as its stability. He also added talc as an inert filler to give more body to the material, and red colouring. The
Gunther Stent Stent joined the small group of phage workers under Max Delbrück at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. This phage group was the incubator for many of the fundamental ideas of the newly emerging science of molecular biology. Informal discussions among these workers on the progress of their research led to a book by Stent entitled "Molecular Biology of Bacterial Viruses" (dedicated to Max Delbrück) which was a lucid account of the state of accomplishments in the field up to 1963. Later, in his memoirs, Stent described some of his activities and interactions with others of the group.