Isabella Aiona Abbott was born June 20, 1919, in Hana, Maui, Territory of Hawaii. Her mother was of mostly Hawaiian ancestry and her father was Chinese. She earned a bachelor’s degree in botany from the University of Hawai‘i in 1941, and a master’s degree from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1942. Both Isabella and her husband, zoologist Donald Putnam Abbott, earned doctorates from the University of California-Berkeley in 1950. In 1960, she was hired as a lecturer in biology at Stanford University. Finally, in 1972, her productiveness as a researcher and effectiveness as a teacher were so undeniable that she was hired as a full professor in biology; she taught there until 1982.
Abbott was the first native Hawaiian woman to receive a PhD in science and became a leading expert on Pacific marine algae. She died at home in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Oct. 28, 2010.
