A prestigious Colles Medal & Travelling Fellowship in Surgery is awarded competitively annually to an Irish surgical trainee embarking on higher specialist training abroad before returning to establish practice in Ireland.

Descended from a Worcestershire family, some of whom had sat in Parliament, he was born to William Colles and Mary Anne Bates of Woodbroak, County Wexford.

[2] Afterwards, he lived in London for a short period, working with the famous surgeon Sir Astley Cooper in his dissections of the inguinal region.

Some of his papers were collected and edited by his son, Mr. William Colles, and published in the Dublin Journal of Medical Science.

Selections from the works of Abraham Colles, chiefly relative to the venereal disease and the use of mercury, comprise Volume XCII of the Library of the New Sydenham Society, published in 1881.

[5] Upon his retirement as Professor of Surgery, the Members of RCSI passed a resolution which included " We have also to assure you that it is the unanimous feeling of the College, that the exemplary and efficient manner in which you have filled this chair for thirty-two years, has been a principal cause of the success and consequent high character of the School of Surgery in this country.

[2] His son William followed in his footsteps, being elected to the Chair of Anatomy in the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in 1863.