User:Camby Kar

Professor Dr. Mohammad Kar MD Written by Cambys Kar Edited by Irene Mead Kar

Professor Dr. Mohammad Kar MD, Founder of the University of Gondishapur

Dr. Mohammad Kar was born August 8, 1907 in Tabriz/Iran and died January 24, 1994 in Teheran/Iran. He was an Iranian pathologist, author, professor at the University of Tehran and in 1955 founder and Chancellor of the modern University of Gondishapur in Ahvaz, Iran and Dean of its medical school.

After his study of medicine at and receiving his doctorate from the University of Teheran the young doctor traveled to Paris/France, in 1936, to further his medical education at the University of Paris Medical School, where he obtained a second doctorate degree in medicine, specializing in Pathology. There he met and married Tatjana Kowarski, a German born citizen of Lithuanian parents, who was working as a medical technologist at the laboratory of the Paris Zoological Gardens. In 1939 he and his wife traveled back to Iran, to accept a position as professor at the University of Tehran School of Medicine, teaching pathology as well as other related courses, while also practicing medicine at his private office in Tehran.

In the summer of 1953, Dr. Kar took a sabbatical leave and traveled to Germany to update and further his medical experience at the Sanatorium of Gundelsheim, in Southern Germany. While there, he observed that a great number of Iranian patients seeking treatments unavailable in Iran, as well as students in the medical field, were coming to Germany and other European countries to study, due to a lack of sufficient opportunities in their homeland. Both patients and students were suffering from homesickness, loneliness and the challenges inherent in adapting to a foreign land, its language, people and culture, in addition to the heavy financial burden carried by their families back home, in consequence of a relatively high exchange rate.

Sensing an urgent need for improvement in the matter, Dr. Kar felt inspired to work toward establishing a medical school in Iran and staffing it with German professors, thus bringing the same high quality educational opportunities, which Iranian students were seeking abroad, to their own country, at a fraction of the cost, while increasing the number of highly trained medical doctors to provide quality care to patients, and eliminating excessive financial and psychological hardships for both students, patients and their families. Such a venture would require only a few foreign professors coming to Iran for limited periods of time, versus thousands of students and patients traveling to Europe and enduring the burdensome struggles mentioned above.

In 1955, Dr. Kar presented his plan to Professor Ludolph Fisher, Director of the Institute for Tropical Medicine at the University of Tuebingen/Germany, asking for his collaboration in committing the University of Tuebingen to sponsor such a program. Professor Fischer agreed to help arrange a meeting with the Dean of the University and later the Ministry of Education of Baden/Wuertember, to support the project. Having succeeded with the German authorities and obtained an Agreement of Intent, both he and professor Fischer traveled together to Iran, in order to enlist the support of the Iranian Ministry of Education including their financial support for this endeavor.

Having succeeded to arrive at that point, Dr. Kar was in for the fight of his life, due to the corruption of government officials, looking for self-serving opportunities (bribes), which this principled, singleminded patriot seeking only to serve his people, was not willing to support. He fought for many months, seemingly un-ending battles with the Iranian authorities, leading him all the way to the Prime Minister and even His Imperial Majesty Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi himself, until he finally succeeded in obtaining the go-ahead and a small budget, to start his project. After considering several locations for his medical school, Dr.Kar decided on the city of Ahwaz, capital of Khuzestan province and site of the famous Academy of Gondishapur, the most important medical center of the ancient world in the 6th and 7th centuries.