It is not easy because there is no closed form expression for the median and quartiles. For the median you can find [several approximate formula's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_distribution#Median_approximations_and_bounds). For the quartiles you could use R's approximation of the quantile function, `qgamma`, and then use an iterative algorithm that finds $k$ and $\theta$ that suit your target. One way to make such algorithm can be by optimizing a cost function f = function(par) { k = par[1] theta = par[2] median = theta*k*(1-1/9/k)^3 ### alternatively compute the median like below #median = qgamma(0.5,shape = k,scale = theta) IQR = qgamma(0.75,shape = k,scale = theta) - qgamma(0.25,shape = k,scale = theta) error = (median-3)^2+(IQR-2.5)^2 return(error) } ### result k = 2.905083 theta = 1.160847 p2 = optim(par = c(1,1), f)$par qgamma(0.5, shape = p2[1], scale = p2[2]) ### 2.994302 qgamma(0.75,shape = p2[1], scale = p2[2])-qgamma(0.25,shape = p1[1],scale = p1[2]) # 2.494646