Joseph Désiré Tholozan (9 October 1820 in Diego Garcia, Mauritius – 30 July 1897 in Tehran, Iran) was a Franco-Mauritian physician.

Joseph Désiré Tholozan was born in 1820 at Diego Garcia, a small atoll in Chagos Archipelago situated in the Indian Ocean, to French parents.

He began his studies at Port Louis alongside Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard before continuing to the Lycée Thiers in Marseille.

[1] He then entered the Marseille School of Medicine, led by François Cauvière, a close relative [2] then to Paris where he defended his thesis in 1843.

Professor Tholozan trained numerous Persian physicians and performed important observations on the epidemiology of the plague, cholera and other infectious diseases such as the Asian relapsing fever.