Dr. Rudolf Gelpke (1928–1972) was a Swiss born Islamic scholar. He studied at the University of Basel where he received his doctorate in Islamic Studies in 1957. Later Gelpke would move to Iran, where he taught at the University of Tehran and then later at the University of Bern in Switzerland. Moreover, he served as an associate professor at UCLA for a year between September 1962 and May 1963. In the eight years he lived in Tehran, he also worked as a freelance writer, who not only translated many famous historical works but also published many of his own works.