“I call the endemic plants the first Hawaiians. Gingers and heliconias will grow elsewhere. The endemic plants will not. This is their home. It’s like the Hawaiian people – they belong here.” – Isabella Abbott
Dr. Isabella Abbott was an ethnobotanist from Hawaii. After receiving her undergraduate degree in botany from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa and her master’s degree in botany from the University of Michigan before becoming the first native Hawaiian woman to receive a PhD in science. As a leading expect on Pacific marine algae, she authored over 150 publications and was credited with the discovery of over 200 species of algae. For all her research work, she was awarded the Gilbert Morgan Smith Medal from the National Academy of Sciences and in 2008, received a lifetime achievement award from the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources for coral reef studies. After her passing in 2010, the University of Hawaii established a scholarship to support research in Hawaiian ethnobotany and marine botany.