Draft:Amir Kia

Amir Kia (Persian: امیر کیا), 28 July 1911–2001, was an Iranian physician, orthopedic surgeon, and professor in medicine at the University of Tehran. He is honored as the Father of modern orthopaedic science in Iran.

Biography
Amir Kia was born in 28 July 1911 in Tehran, Persia, as the fourth son of Taher Kia (titled as Montazem Divan), a wealthy landowner from Lashak in Nowshahr County in Mazandaran province. The father served as Aide-de-camp at Ministry of Interior in Qajar Iran.

Education
Amir Kia received his secondary education in Tehran. In 1930 he went to France to study medicine and specialized in orthopedic surgery under the supervision of Dr. Georges Küss (1877 -1967), who was the Head of the surgical clinic of the Faculty of Medicine of University of Paris and later became the president of the Académie nationale de chirurgie. He received his M.D. in orthopedic surgery from University of Paris and was also awarded a silver medal from the university for his doctoral thesis.

Professional career
After ten years of study in France, Amir Kia returned to Iran and started to work as a orthopedic surgeon at Sina Hospital in Tehran under Professor Yahya Adl, the Father of Modern Surgery in Iran. Sina Hospital was the first modern hospital in Iran, established in 1837 in the heart of Tehran’s historical district and the city’s most medical institution. Amir Kia was the first specialist in orthopedic surgery at the hospital, and he is honored as the Father of modern orthopaedic science in Iran.

He was also affiliated to the Faculty of Medical Sciences at the University of Tehran and appointed as the director of the orthopedic section at Hakim ol-Molk Hospital in Tehran. He spent the academic year in 1951-1952 as a Fulbright scholar at the University of California in San Francisco.

Amir Kia was an active member of Société Internationale de Chirurgie Orthopédique et de Traumatologie (SICOT) in Brussels, Belgium, and was awarded a medal from the society for his major contribution in the advancement of orthopedic science. He was also a member of the American Orthopaedic Association and participated in its annual general meetings until the late 1980s. He is known for inventing an artificial transfemoral limb. He regularly participated in international conferences and contributed to strengthening the academic profile of the Faculty of Medical Sciences at Tehran University.

In 1976 Amir Kia started to work at Nour Afshar Hospital, which opened in Tehran in 1976 providing services in different field as orthopedic surgery, rehabilitation, physiotherapy, hydrotherapy, a laboratory, and radiology. His work was particularly focused on children with polio, who all received free care there until the Revolution.

From the mid-1960s the Iranian crown prince Reza Pahlavi used to visit the hospital regularly, and every year he shared his birth day cake with the child patients.

Personal life
In March 1944 Amir Kia married with Qamar Zaman Khanum, the daughter of Sadeq Mirza Ehtesham Divan, in Tehran. The couple had three daughters: Ladan Kia (b. 1945), Laleh Kia (b. 1946) and Niloufar Kia (b. 1959).

Amir Kia is the younger brother of Ali, Mohammad-Vali, Yahya, and Hamid. Ali Kia (b. 1907) was general in the Imperial Iranian Armed Forces, a graduate from Tehran Military College and Royal Swedish Army Staff College, Stockholm. He was the chief of army intelligence in Iran in 1948–1953, and before that he served as military attaché in Stockholm and Berlin for twelve years and in Prague and Budapest for four years. Yahya was a businessman and settled in Sweden in the 1930s. Mohammad-Vali changed his surname to Siassi Montazem and was in 1944 appointed Iran’s ambassador to Sweden.

Amir Kia died in Tehran in 2001 (1380 S.H.) and is buried in the Behesht Zahra Cemetery.

Published works
Amir Kia published numerous books and articles on medicine, especially orthopedic surgery, in Persian and English. He is most famous for his book Shekaste-bandi (Orthopedic surgery), which was published in three volumes by University of Tehran in 1951. It covers all areas of orthopedic surgery in about 600 pages and it is still considered a standard-work on the subject in Iran.