He attended Magnus Grammar School in Newark-on-Trent before graduating with first class honours from Northern Polytechnic London, where he studied chemistry, in 1951.

He then earned his PhD from University College London (UCL) under Alwyn Davies, and later his DSc in 1974.

Key works done by Abraham and his UCL colleagues include the measuring and calculation of molecular properties of thousands of molecules.

[citation needed] These properties include H-bond acidity and basicity, dipolarity and polarisability.

[3] Michael Abraham and his wife Elisabeth Mayer (died 1999) had two sons, Benjamin and Jonathan.