Jakob Eduard Polak (12 November 1818 in Böhmen (Mořina); † 8 October 1891 in Vienna) was an Austrian physician who played an important role in introducing modern medicine in Iran.[1]
He was one of the six Austrian teachers invited by Amir Kabir, the Persian chief minister, as the instructors of Dar ul-Funun, the first modern higher education institution in Iran. By his own account, he entered Iran on the 24th of November 1851, before the inauguration of the Dal al-fonun.
From 1851 to 1860, he taught medicine at Dar al-fonun. At the beginning he taught in French and used a translator. Soon, the incompetence of the translators motivated him to learn Persian. As a result, he learned Persian in six months, and then he thought his course in Persian.From 1855 to 1860, he served as personal physician of Naser-al-din Shah.[2]
He published the result of his Persien experience in: Das Land und seine Bewohner (1865) belongs to the outstanding ethnographic works about 19th-century Iran.[3]