Abbe’s father was a book printer and factory worker and his childhood was one of privation. Nevertheless, he studied at U Jena and U Göttingen, receiving his PhD in 1861. In 1863 he was appointed to a lectureship at Jena on the basis of a dissertation that, in effect, derived the chi-squared distribution. Following an approach from Carl Zeiss, most of his subsequent work was concerned with optics and astronomy. A lunar crater is named after him, also a minor planet, and several schools in Germany.

http://turnbull.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Biographies/Abbe.html Fuller biography and photograph.