Annakkili Amma Research Institute (AARI)

  Prof. Isabella Aiona Abbott Prof. Isabella Aiona Abbott, whose native Hawai'ian name was Isabella Kauakea (White Rain of Hana) Yau Yung Aiona was born on June 20, 1919. Her father was ethnically Chinese while her mother was a Native Hawaiian. Abbott was the only girl and second youngest in a family of eight siblings. She received her undergraduate degree in botany at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa in 1941, a master's degree in botany from the University of Michigan in 1942, and a Ph.D. in botany from the University of California, Berkeley in 1950. In that era, women with PhDs were scarce and faculty positions for them were even scarcer.  She was the first Native Hawai’ian woman to earn a Ph.D. in science.  She married a zoologist Donald Putnam Abbott, who had been a fellow student at the University of Hawaii as well as Berkeley. The couple moved to Pacific Grove, California where her husband taught at the Hopkins Marine Station run by Stanford University.  For ...