He was also a co-owner of Carl Zeiss AG, a German manufacturer of scientific microscopes, astronomical telescopes, planetariums, and other advanced optical systems.

Supported by his father's employer, Abbe was able to attend secondary school and to obtain the general qualification for university entrance with fairly good grades, at the Eisenach Gymnasium, which he graduated from in 1857.

Thus, in spite of the family's strained financial situation, his father decided to support Abbe's studies at the Universities of Jena (1857–1859) and Göttingen (1859–1861).

[4] This was followed by two short assignments at the Göttingen observatory and at Physikalischer Verein in Frankfurt (an association of citizens interested in physics and chemistry that was founded by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in 1824 and still exists today).

[8] He created the Abbe number, a measure of any transparent material's variation of refractive index with wavelength and Abbe's criterion, which tests the hypothesis, that a systematic trend exists in a set of observations (in terms of resolving power this criterion stipulates that an angular separation cannot be less than the ratio of the wavelength to the aperture diameter, see angular resolution).

[9] Already a professor in Jena, he was hired by Carl Zeiss to improve the manufacturing process of optical instruments, which back then was largely based on trial and error.

Abbe was the first to define the term numerical aperture,[10] as the sine of the half angle multiplied by the refractive index of the medium filling the space between the cover glass and front lens.

Helmholtz was so impressed as to offer Abbe a professorship at the University of Berlin, which he declined because of his ties to Zeiss.

[4] During his association with Carl Zeiss' microscope works, not only was he at the forefront of the field of optics but also labor reform.

[2] In 1889, Ernst Abbe set up and endowed the Carl Zeiss Foundation for research in science.

"[8] He made it a point that the success of an employee was based solely on their ability and performance, not on their origin, religion, or political views.

[5] His social views were so respected as to be used by the Prussian state as a model and idealized by Alfred Weber in the 1947 book Schriften der Heidelberger Aktionsgruppe zur Demokratie und Zum Freien Sozialismus (Writings of the Heidelberg Action Group on Democracy and Free Socialism).

Below is a list of publications he authored including many links to the scanned Google Books pages.