Vasile Pop

Vasile Pop (1789 – March 6, 1842) was an Imperial Austrian ethnic Romanian medical doctor.

Born into an intellectual family in Chimitelnic, Mureș County, Transylvania, he began his education at the Greek-Catholic gymnasium in Târgu Mureș. He then went to the Piarist high school in Cluj, followed by the University of Vienna. He received a doctorate in philosophy in 1814, becoming the first Romanian to do so, according to Gheorghe Asachi. In 1817, he received a second doctorate, in medicine. Later that year, he moved to Brașov, where he wrote a treatise on the mineral water of Arpătac, Bodoc and Covasna, considered the first Romanian-language medical work. In 1820, Asachi invited several Transylvanian intellectuals, including Pop, to teach in Iași, the capital of Moldavia. There, Pop became director of the Romanian Orthodox Socola seminary, where he also taught philosophy and philology. He was obliged to leave after several months, due to the outbreak of an uprising in neighboring Wallachia.