In 1950, by the age of 31 Dr. Isabella Aiona Abbot had received a PhD in botany from the University of California Berkeley, and became the first Native Hawaiian woman to earn a doctoral degree in the field of science.

She became a lecturer in the Biology Department of Stanford in 1960, and in 1971 Abbott became the first woman on Stanford’s biological sciences faculty. Over the span of her career she won many awards, including the Darbaker Prize and a Lifetime Achievement Award, and authored eight books and over 150 research papers.

She has been credited with discovering over 200 different algae species and had many of these named after her, including a genus of the red algae family which is called Abbottella or “little Abbott.”