POLAK, JACOB EDUARD (1820–1891), physician and writer. Born in
Bohemia, he studied medicine and science in Prague and Vienna
and in 1851 was invited to Teheran by the Persian government to
serve as professor of anatomy and surgery at the military
college. In 1856 he was appointed court physician to Shah Nasr-
el-Din. Polak returned to Vienna in 1860 and was associated with
the general hospital there while acting as lecturer in Persian
at the University of Vienna. When Nasr-el-Din toured Europe in
1872 he visited Polak, who is mentioned in the shah's "Diary" as
his "good old friend." Polak wrote a number of important
treatises in Persian on anatomy, surgery, ophthalmology, and
military medicine, some of which became standard works. He also
compiled a medical dictionary in Persian, Arabic, and Latin in
order to provide the Persian language with a system of medical
terminology, and composed a much-used dictionary, Deutsch-
persiches Konversationswoerterbuch (1914).  A faithful and
devoted Jew, Polak used his prest