My dad, Peter Cousins, who has died aged 87, was the first orthodontist to set up practice in Wales, in 1952. He was also a founder of the University of Wales's first dental hospital in 1972 and a president of the British Orthodontics Association at his retirement in 1986. Among the major orthodontic techniques he pioneered were adding back braces with elastic bands in strategic places so teeth could be straightened in the shortest time with the least pain and straightest result. These were admired and copied in the US and Germany; Dad received lucrative offers to work in those countries, but he was not interested in undertaking private dentistry when there were ordinary people to help.
During his later years, he continued to help the weak and vulnerable. With George Thomas, Viscount Tonypandy, he was instrumental in 1994 in helping to create the first hospice service for Wales. It began as a meeting in the tiny church hall of St Brigid's church, Cardiff, and George Thomas Hospice Care is now the major provider of free end-of-life care in Wales.
Born Alec Poole Cousins in Teignmouth, Devon, he was always known as Peter thanks to a beach photographer on Paignton Sands calling him that when he was four. He excelled at St Boniface Jesuit boarding school, Plymouth, and wanted to study medicine. However, he was forced by his father (a former Guy's hospital dentist) to study dentistry at Bristol University, where he was elected president of the Cardinal Newman Society. His Catholicism was important to him.
Dad qualified in 1948, the year the NHS was founded, and was dedicated from the start, joining a dental practice in Clifton, Bristol. In the same year, he bought a plot of land, designed and built his own house at Easton in Gordano, Somerset, and married Jean Berry, a children's nurse.
In 1952, they struck out on their own, and Dad became the first orthodontist in Wales, with Jean as his practice nurse, at 80 Cathedral Road in Cardiff. The specialism was in its infancy and Dad devised a robust curriculum for the new orthodontics course in the dental school that opened at the University of Wales, Cardiff, in 1972.
Self-effacing, understated, gentle and good-looking, Dad was often mistaken for Gregory Peck, and looked incredibly young until his 60s. His funeral was held in the Catholic church of Christ the King in Cardiff, which he had helped raise funds to build in 1981. He taught his family, by example, to always put principle before private gain.
He is survived by Jean, his son, Paul, and me. Our sister, Angela, predeceased him.