Richard L. Abbott, M.D. completed his Bachelor of Science degree at Tufts University in Boston and his medical degree at the George Washington University School of Medicine in Washington, DC. He completed his residency at the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco and was a Heed and Fight for Sight cornea and external disease fellow at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Miami.

Dr. Abbott returned to San Francisco and served on the faculty at California Pacific Medical Center from 1978-1995, where he was Co-Director and then Director of the Cornea Service. In 1995 he was recruited to join the faculty at the University of California San Francisco as Director of the cornea and refractive surgery service. He currently is the Thomas W. Boyden Professor Emeritus at UCSF and Research Associate at the Francis I. Proctor Foundation. He currently serves as the President of Academia Ophthalmologica Internationalis. In 2020 Dr. Abbott was appointed Honorary President of the Zhejjang University Eye Institute and Hospital in Hangzhou, China and was chosen as the Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Elsevier journal, “Advances in Ophthalmology Practice and Research”, an English scientific, online, peer-reviewed, international, and fully open-access journal.

Dr. Abbott is Past President of the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) and the Past President of both the Pan American Association of Ophthalmology and the Pan American Ophthalmological Foundation. He is past Chairman of the Board of the Ophthalmic Mutual Insurance Company (OMIC) and a former Director of the American Board of Ophthalmology. He is a past Board Director for the International Council of Ophthalmology and served as Chairman of the Clinical Practice Guidelines Committee.  Among the many leadership positions held for the American Academy of Ophthalmology, Dr. Abbott served as the Chair of the extensive Ophthalmic Knowledge Base project which defined and developed the curriculum used by the American Board of Ophthalmology for its Maintenance of Certification examination, chaired the development of the Preferred Practice Patterns (PPPs), and served as Secretary for Global Alliances and Quality of Care.

Dr. Abbott has received numerous honors, including the U.S. President’s 25 year Volunteer Service Award; The International Blindness Prevention Award from the AAO, The Sir Stuart Duke Elder International Gold Medal, the International Gold Medal from the Chinese Association of Ophthalmology; the Jose Rizal Medal for International Service to the Asia Pacific region from the Asia Pacific Academy of Ophthalmology; the AE Maumenee Pan American Medal for Distinguished Service to Latin America from the Pan American Association of Ophthalmology; the Asia Pacific Cornea Foundation Medal from the Asia Pacific Cornea Society; the Mark Tso Golden Apple International Teaching Award from the International Council of Ophthalmology; the American Academy of Ophthalmology’s Lifetime Achievement Award; and the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award from Marquis Who’s Who publications. Dr. Abbott was recently selected as one of 24 World Eye-Cons honoring Visionary Global Leaders in Ophthalmology of the 21st century by the Asia Pacific Journal of Ophthalmology. He has authored or co-authored 91 publications and 33 book chapters and has delivered over 850 invited lectures and 36 named lectures.