He attended high school at Englewood, and afterward was a student of engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.
[1] He gave up engineering partway through his degree, due to circumstances that required him to take charge of the family farm, where he grew wealthy through his agricultural business and real estate investments.
His business ventures included agriculture and real estate, and by 1929, he was a partner in the land development and oil production company of Bliss & Wetherbee.
Part of the Bliss bequest was earmarked to support the Grainger Engineering Library and Information Center Endowment, and the remainder towards other projects for “advancing the scholastic activities of the School of Engineering.” [5] The bequest was so generous that it currently sustains several professorships annually at the School of Engineering, University of Illinois.
The Abel Bliss Professorship has been awarded to individuals such as Jiawei Han[6] (computer science), Rashid Bashir[7] (semiconductors, MEMS, and Biosensors), William P. King [8] (Materials Science), Stephen A. Boppart[9] (Bioengineering and Internal Medicine), Kent D. Choquette[10] (vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers), Philippe H. Geubelle [11] (Aerospace Engineering), David Ruzic[12] (Plasma Engineering), Albert J. Valocchi[13] (water resources engineering, groundwater hydrology and contaminant transport), Elyse Rosenbaum[14] (Bliss Faculty Scholar Award), Rob A. Rutenbar[15] (computer science and computer engineering), and Deming Chen[16] (Electrical and Computer Engineering[14]), all of whom are currently researching further technologies at the University of Illinois.