Dr. Younes Karimi (1929-2008), the Prominent Iranian Physician in the Field of Plague and Other Infectious Diseases

Dr. Younes Karimi was born in 1929 in Lotfabad Dargaz, Razavi Khorasan Province, where he accomplished the primary education. He received his diploma in Mashhad, northeast of Iran and followed his medical education and specialty in Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine at the University of Tehran by presenting his Ph.D. thesis entitled “Dried smallpox vaccine" in 1975. He also attended microbiology and immunology courses at the Institute Pasteur of Paris. Returning to Iran, he was engaged at Pasteur Institute of Iran and devoted his scientific career for researching on infectious diseases and the control of these diseases in Iran. He was also the head of the Department of Epidemiology and the Deputy Director of Pasteur Institute of Iran. He was a hard-working person with scientific prestige and dignified character and a man of action interested in the field activities. Dr. Karimi’s major scientific research was in the field of plague. Furthermore, he conducted a number of researches on other infectious diseases such as tularemia, relapsing fever, hemorrhagic purpura, hepatitis B, and brucellosis. In this paper, his scientific career is reviewed and discussed...