Joseph Cochran

Joseph Plumb Cochran, M.D. (January 14, 1855, Urmia, Iran – August 18, 1905, Urmia, Iran), was an American Presbyterian missionary. He is credited as the founding father of Iran’s first modern Medical School.

Personal Life

Joseph Cochran's father, the Reverend Joseph Gallup Cochran (1817-1871), and his mother, Deborah Wilber Plumb (1820-1893), were first-generation American missionaries who traveled to Iran in 1848. They settled in Urmia, Western Azarbaijan, Iran, home to the people of the ancient culture of Urartu and of one of the earliest Christian churches, the Assyrian Church of the East. The family devoted their missionary zeal to the well-being of the local population, many of whom were devout Christians.

The young Joseph was one of the eight children of Cochran's family. He had a happy childhood in the company of his large family and friends. He learnt the local Assyrian, Azerbaijani and Kurdish, in addition to English and Persian. He left for America as a teenager in 1868, staying in Buffalo, N.Y. with the family of Stephen Mallory Clement (1825-1892), who was to help finance not only Joseph Cochran's education, but also his hospital. He studied medicine at New York Medical College, from where he graduated in 1876. Subsequently he did two years of practical hospital work in surgery, infectious diseases and gynecology. During a travel to Minnesota he met his future wife, Katherine Hale.