A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists/Abbe, Professor Ernst
Abbe, Professor Ernst, German physicist and philanthropist. B. Jan. 23, 1840. Ed. Jena and Gottingen Universities. After a few years as assistant at Göttingen University Observatory, he began, in 1863, to teach mathematics, physics, and astronomy at Jena University, and in 1870 he was appointed professor. Eight years later he became Director of the Astronomical and Meteorological Observatories at Jena. His connection with the famous Zeiss optical works, the world-repute of which was mainly due to Abbe s discoveries, had begun in 1866. He was admitted to partnership in 1875; and in 1891, at the death of Zeiss, he became sole proprietor. Being a man of singularly high character and social idealism, Abbe then drew up one of the most generous schemes (the "Carl Zeiss Stiftung") of profit-sharing in Europe. Indeed, he virtually handed over the immense concern to the workers and the University. Up to date the University has derived more than 100,000 from the scheme. Professor Haeckel, his intimate friend, describes him as " a Monistic philosopher and social reformer, with just the same ideas and aims as the late Francisco Ferrer" (F. Ferrer, by Leonard Abbott, 1910, p. 75). Abbe was one of the greatest promoters of optical science in the second half of the nineteenth century. D. Jan. 1905.