Rafiuddin Ahmed was born on 24 December 1890 in Bardhanpara, in the Bengal Presidency of British India. After early education and a period at Aligarh, he made his way to the United States, working his passage across the ocean. In 1915 he graduated as a Doctor of Dental Surgery from the University of Iowa College of Dentistry. During the First World War he worked at the Forsyth Dental Infirmary for Children in Boston. In 1919 he returned to India and opened a practice in Calcutta.

What he found shocked him. A vast country with ancient traditions of oral care had almost no formal training in modern dentistry. In 1920, with determination and limited resources — partly funded by a New York Soda Fountain he ran in the city — he founded the first dental college in India. It began with just eleven students. He himself taught theory and practice, and remained its principal until 1950. One of the early students was Fatima Jinnah.

By 1928 the institution was properly organised. That year he published the first Indian student’s handbook on operative dentistry. In 1925 he launched the Indian Dental Journal and edited it for more than two decades. He played a central role in the Bengal Dentist Act of 1939 — the first government regulation of the profession in India — which later became the model for the national Dentists Act. In 1946 he helped establish the Bengal Dental Association, which grew into the Indian Dental Association. He served three terms as its president and became the first elected president of the Indian Dental Council (1954–1958).

In 1949 he took a decision that revealed his character: he donated the college he had built with his own efforts to the West Bengal government so that it could serve the wider public under national administration. It continues today as the Dr. R. Ahmed Dental College and Hospital.

After Independence he entered public life. Invited by Chief Minister Dr. B. C. Roy, he served for many years as a minister in the West Bengal cabinet, looking after portfolios that included agriculture, community development, cooperation, relief and rehabilitation.

Colleagues remembered a man who combined professional vision with practical patriotism. When younger dentists once asked him why he had given away the institution that bore his life’s work, he is said to have replied:

“A college is not private property. It is a seed. If it is planted in the soil of the nation, it will grow for everyone.”

In 1964 the Government of India awarded him the Padma Bhushan — the first time the honour had been given to a dentist. He also received fellowships from the International College of Dentists, the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and the Pierre Fauchard Academy.

Rafiuddin Ahmed died on 9 February 1965 in Calcutta. His birthday is observed as National Dentist Day in India. In the story of Indian doctors and healers, he stands as the pioneer who gave the country its first formal school of dentistry, its professional associations, its regulatory framework, and a lasting example of service that placed the public good above personal ownership.