Iranian immigrant became nutrition expert, peace advocate
A talented healer and prolific writer, Dr. Siamak A. Adibi was a man for whom peace was paramount.
An Iranian immigrant and expert on Middle Eastern politics and history, he struggled for years between the pull of his dual identities, wanting to bring peace and prosperity to his native land while at the same time embracing his new home.
“Dr. Adibi was such a bright and intrepid soul: accomplished and thoughtful about so many subjects, including his great medical expertise and his views on relations between his native Iran and the U.S., and the subject of world peace,” said his friend Maxwell King, former president of The Heinz Endowments and The Pittsburgh Foundation.
Dr. Adibi, 88, of Squirrel Hill, died May 10 of heart failure.
He had an idyllic childhood, growing up in Tehran in what was then a pro-Western society.
“They would go to the Caspian Sea and he rode horses and had a big, loving family,” said his daughter Elise Adibi, of Los Angeles. “He grew up in a home with a father who was progressive thinking and had progressive ideas for his time.”
Dr. Adibi’s mother died when he was 11 years old, prompting him to pursue a career in medicine and an education in the West.
When he was 17, Dr. Adibi and a group of other high school graduates raised enough money to charter a plane to Europe and America, where they planned to study abroad.
But a currency crisis shuttered
Iranian banks just as the group of young men were to take off, his daughter said.
“He organized a sit-in in Parliament with these students and the Shah stepped in and made it possible to convert the money they needed for the plane,” she said of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the country’s leader at the time. “He left with a bang and when he arrived in Baltimore he didn’t even speak English.”
“He arrived in Baltimore with almost no resources and showed up unannounced at Johns Hopkins University to say that he was ready to be educated,” Mr. King said. “Someone there had the wit to bring this bright young man into the fold and he became an accomplished doctor, an expert nutritionist and a great teacher himself at the University of Pittsburgh.”
Before he began his studies at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Adibi took the dean’s advice and enrolled at the University of Maryland, where he learned English.
Within just three years, he earned a bachelor’s degree in premed at Johns Hopkins and went on to graduate from Thomas Jefferson Medical School in Philadelphia.
In 1960, Dr. Adibi met Sewickley native Joan Foedisch at a party in Philadelphia. The couple married three years later and moved to Boston, where Dr. Adibi obtained a graduate degree in physiological chemistry and nutrition from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“He had interest in basic science,” his daughter said. “All along he had ideas of how to apply science into medicine.”
Dr. Adibi served his residency at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, where he continued his postdoctoral training.
He and his young family came to Squirrel Hill in 1966, when he accepted a job as chief of gastroenterology and clinical nutrition at Montefiore Hospital and began teaching at the Pitt School of Medicine. He continued in that role until his retirement in 2002.
Dr. Adibi received several prestigious grants to study nutrition and health, and he developed a patented, protein-rich solution for intravenous use, replacing what had previously been essentially a sugar water solution, his daughter said.
It was a field that particularly intrigued him throughout his life.
“He made many contributions to the field of nutrition,” she said. “He was so self-motivated and ahead of his time. He would even make himself salads growing up in Iran, which was unusual, and he exercised every day, even near the end of his life.”
In 1978, the Shah offered Dr. Adibi his “dream job” as imperial chief of medicine — the top medical position in Iran, his daughter said.
The government planned to build a regional medical and research center that would serve the entire Middle East and the Shah wanted advisers like Dr. Adibi, who was by then an American citizen, to oversee it.
“When the Shah invited him and some of his other colleagues to be a part of it, he was so excited,” Ms. Adibi said. “He was invited to the palace and the plan was we would live there for half the year and here for half the year.”
But the 1979 Islamic Revolution overthrew the Shah, along with his plans and pro-Western sympathies.
“I can only imagine how devastating that was for him,” his daughter said. “He lost the country he loved and many of our relatives had to leave too.”
As an immigrant who completely Americanized himself — Dr. Adibi didn’t even teach his children his native Farsi — her father often found himself conflicted between his two, now polar-opposite homelands, his daughter said.
“He went all-in,” she said. “He raised us to be 100% American.”
In the years since the revolution, Dr. Adibi was invited back to Iran several times to lecture medical students and doctors.
“I think it was very healing when the Islamic Iranian government invited him,” his daughter said. “It was very important for him to make those trips.”
Along with hundreds of medical journal articles and publications, Dr. Adibi wrote countless op-eds and often lectured about the path to world peace.
He authored two books, including a memoir and a book about
Iranian-American relations.
“He was so thoughtful about international relations and the need for peace that he accomplished more as an author and a speaker,” Mr. King said. “He was all these things and a good friend.”
An avid supporter of the Pittsburgh Symphony, Pittsburgh Opera and Chatham Baroque, Dr. Adibi loved Beethoven so much he named his sailboat “Eroica,” after his famous composition.
His other passion was Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts, where Dr. Adibi and his family spent dozens of summers, at first in primitive cottages — some even without power or hot water — then eventually at the beach retreat they built in 1976.
“The island was love at first sight for my parents,” Ms. Adibi said. “Dad rode his bike back and forth to the ferry every day. He just loved experiencing nature and simplicity. Those days were so special.”
Along with his wife and daughter, Dr. Adibi is survived by his children Camron, of Marblehead, Mass., and Jennifer, of Point Breeze; and three grandchildren.
In lieu of flowers, contributions can be sent to the First Unitarian Church of Pittsburgh, the Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation (Martha’s Vineyard) or WQED.
Friends and loved ones are invited to attend Dr. Adibi’s funeral, which will be live-streamed on Saturday at 10 a.m. at https:// youtu.be/yZewGgjbrss, followed by a reception from 11 a.m. to noon via the Zoom app at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87123129020