Badri Teymourtash

Who was Badri Teymourtash?

Badri Teymourtash is considered the first female Iranian dentist. Born to an influential Iranian family in 1911, and the sister of Iran's second most powerful political personality during the early Pahlavi Dynasty, Abdolhossein Teymourtāsh, she was sent to Belgium in the late 1920s and enrolled in Dental School.

Upon graduating from Dental School, she is believed to have considered moving to the Belgian Congo to undertake humanitarian work. However, Abdolhossein Teymourtash's fall from grace in 1932 prompted her to return to Iran where along with Teymourtash's wife and children she endured eight years of house arrest and exile to the family's farflung estates in Khorasan. After Reza Shah's abdication in 1941, pursuant to a general amnesty, all political prisoners were released, and Badri Teymourtash moved to Mashad where she pursued dentistry.

In the 1960s she assisted in founding Mashad University's School of Dentistry. During the 1980s the library at Mashad University's School of Dentistry was renamed in her honour.