Biography

American physician and field naturalist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who trained at the University of Pennsylvania (AB, 1881; MD, 1884). He continued medical education in England and attained Licentiates from the Royal College of Surgeons and the Royal College of Physicians. Despite his achievements, he gave up his medical career when he received his inheritance and became independently wealthy. Instead, he pursued his interests in natural history, particularly ornithology, and in travel. He had made early collections of birds from Iowa and North Dakota (1880), from Cuba and the Dominican Republic (1883), and donated his collection of birds of Philadelphia and New Jersey to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.

His major travels began with an expedition to Mount Kilimanjaro in East Africa (1887-1888), collections which were donated to the Smithsonian Institution (1890). He also collected in Madagascar and the Seychelles, though his early African natural history material probably contained comparatively few botanical specimens. He travelled to Kashmir, India (1891) where he based himself and collected for the next few years, making expeditions to the Seychelles (1892) and Kazakhstan (1893-1894). In 1894 he went to Madagascar to enlist in the native army against the second French occupation of the island, but suspicion of foreigners forced his resignation. He travelled and collected in Madagascar before returning to Kashmir in 1895.

In 1896, he began collecting for the Smithsonian in Southeast Asia, but contracted a fever in Thailand and returned to Kashmir to recuperate, making a brief expedition to Tibet (Xizang) in 1898. He served as a volunteer in Cuba (1898) but was wounded and returned to the United States until he was fit to travel once more to Southeast Asia. Using Singapore as a base, he had the schooner Terrapin constructed (1899) and explored much of the region, often in the company of C.B. Kloss. His collections of this period include ethnological artifacts and photographs. His travels ceased following an eye disease which led to the sale of his schooner and specialist treatment in Europe (1909). During this period he financed the Borneo expedition (1910) of his field assistant, the zoologist H.C. Raven. On his recovery, Abbott returned to Kashmir (1910-1916) where he continued to collect.

The final phase of his collecting took place in the West Indies where he collected in the Dominican Republic (1916) and Haiti (1917-1918) before an attack of dysentry proved to be almost fatal. He made further botanical collections with E.C. Leonard in Haiti (1920). Abbott returned to the highlands of Dominican Republic (1921-1923) until his eventual retirement from field collecting to a farm on the Elk River in Maryland. Despite his pre-eminence as a field naturalist, Abbot did not publish accounts of his travels though many publications are based on his collections.