Stephen Gould was a consultant orthodontist at the Eastman Dental Hospital, London. He was born in Southampton, the son of Arthur Gould, a printer and alderman, and Alice Gould née Elliott. The family later moved to Wolverhampton and Stephen attended the local grammar school. After school, in 1941, he volunteered for the Army and served in India and Burma, joining the headquarters of the Allied Land Forces South East Asia in 1944. Four years later he was discharged with tuberculosis, which led to the loss of his left kidney. He moved to London and, after a period of convalescence, started studying dentistry at Guy’s Hospital Dental School in 1949. Despite having to take a year out to undergo a partial removal of his remaining kidney, he qualified in 1955. He then spent a short period in general dental practice, while also holding a part time post as a demonstrator in periodontology at Guy’s. He then joined one of the first postgraduate orthodontic courses at the Royal Dental Hospital, London and gained his diploma in orthodontics in 1956. Deciding on a hospital career, he gained his FDS in 1960 and joined the Eastman Dental Hospital as a senior registrar, being promoted to an orthodontic consultant there in 1963. He also developed an interest in temporomandibular joint dysfunction and established a specialist treatment clinic. He was a member of the board of governors of the Eastman and, in the 1970s, played a crucial role, with the dean, Ivor Kramer, in securing the future of the hospital. Stephen served on the Eastman’s rebuilding committee from 1980 to 1985. He served as honorary secretary of the British Society for the Study of Orthodontics (BSSO) for six years until 1974, during which time he helped organise the Third International Orthodontic Congress, held in August 1973 in London’s Festival Hall. He was chairman of the consultant orthodontists group from 1979 to 1981 and chairman of BSSO from 1984 to 1987. In 1975 he submitted his paper to the BSSO council advocating unification of the then five British orthodontic societies, which marked the beginning of the unification movement. Initial steps included the setting up of the first working party on orthodontic standards and the robust response made jointly by the five orthodontic societies to the Schanshieff enquiry into unnecessary dental treatment, which in 1986 had unexpectedly concentrated on orthodontic treatment. The first meeting of the unified British Orthodontic Society (BOS) took place in 1994, and Stephen became its president the following year. In his retirement Stephen continued to keep abreast of the society’s affairs. He was a regular attender of the BOS past presidents’ dinners and made a major contribution to *A history of the British orthodontic societies 1907-1994* (London, British Orthodontic Society, 2002).