Abbott, Donald Putnam.

Biographical/Historical note

Donald Putnam Abbott was born in 1920, and raised in Chicago. After Don graduated from University High School, he headed west to Hawaii where he attended the University of Hawaii, earbubg a degree in Zoology in 1941. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the Army, serving in the Chemical Warfare Service through the war. When the war was over, he earned a PhD in Zoology from Berkeley in 1950. After 1950 he spent his entire career at the Hopkins Marine Station (with excursions to the Pacific and Indian Oceans). He retired in 1982, going back to Hawaii.

Don Abbott's courses at the Hopkins Marine Station were alway very popular, and the classroom was always full of students. For ten years Abbott also offered a field course on the invertebrates on campus. He received the Dean's Award for teaching in 1978 and that at the 1982 Commencement, he received the Dinkelspiel Award for Outstanding Service to Undergraduate Education. A considerable part of Don's research was done at sea, or on tropical islands. Abbott's teaching extended to "Stanford at Sea", established in 1963 by the gift of Harold Miller's yacht, Te Vega, which was refitted as a marine biology facility and operated by Hopkins Marine Station from 1963 to 1970. Don was on many of these cruises: to the Indian Ocean (Mombasa to Singapore in 1964), to Hawaii in 1967, the Eastern Pacific in 1968, and on Proteus to British Columbia in 1970.

Abbott died in 1986.

From the guide to the Donald P. Abbott papers, circa 1955-1982, (Department of Special Collections and University Archives)