Richard Abbott
Richard L. Abbott, MD, the Thomas W. Boyden Health Sciences Clinical Professor of Ophthalmology at UCSF and research associate at the Francis I. Proctor Foundation, has received the American Academy of Ophthalmology's Lifetime Achievement Honor Award.
Abbott is one of six eye doctors honored for their contributions to the academy and to the ophthalmology profession. The awards were presented at the 2006 Joint Meeting held in Las Vegas in November.
Contributions include serving as an instructor, authoring scientific papers and posters, presenting scientific exhibits, serving as a committee member, state society president or trustee and authoring or co-authoring Academy educational materials.
Abbott received his BS degree in biochemistry from Tufts University in 1967 and his MD degree from the George Washington University School of Medicine in 1971. After completing his internship at Los Angeles County Hospital, he spent two years in the Indian Public Health Service, teaching medics and running a community health clinic on the Navajo reservation.
Abbott then pursued his ophthalmology training with a residency at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco and a fellowship in corneal and external diseases at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Miami, where he was awarded both a Heed and a Fight for Sight Fellowship grant. In 1978, upon completion of his training, Abbott returned to San Francisco, where he practiced for 17 years as a consultant and then director of the Cornea and Refractive Surgery Service at California Pacific Medical Center. He joined the full-time faculty at UCSF as professor and co-director of the Cornea and Refractive Surgery Service in 1995.
Abbott is a fellow of the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO), and received its Honor Award in 1984 and its Senior Honor Award in 1994. In 1995, he was the recipient of the Distinguished Lecturer Scholarship from the Ministry of Health, Singapore. Abbott has authored or co-authored more than 80 publications and 28 book chapters, and has delivered more than 500 invited lectures and 16 named lectures.
Abbott is currently involved in several leadership positions for many organizations. These include serving as secretary for Quality of Care and Knowledge Base Development for the AAO, on the Committee of Secretaries for the AAO, as president-elect of Pan American Association of Ophthalmology and as president of the Pan American Ophthalmological Foundation.
Abbott is a director emeritus of the American Board of Ophthalmology and the Castroviejo Cornea Society, as well as a former member of the American Academy of Ophthalmology Board of Trustees, where he served as senior secretary for Ophthalmic Practice.
He also has served as a member of the Food and Drug Administration's Ophthalmic Devices Panel and the National Eye Institute coordinating committee for the development of a patient assessment instrument for refractive error correction.
AAO is the world's largest association of eye physicians and surgeons and has more than 27,000 members worldwide.
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American Academy of Ophthalmology
