Piet Drabbe (born Petrus Drabbe in Heino, Netherlands, June 4, 1887; died in Arnhem, Netherlands, October 27, 1970) was a member of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart who worked successively from 1912 to 1960 in the Philippines, the Tanimbar Islands, and on the southern coast of Dutch New Guinea, now the Indonesian province of Papua.
Like the other priests of the Sacred Heart – including Petrus Vertenten, Jos van der Kolk, Henricus Geurtjens, and Jan Boelaars – Drabbe has conducted valuable linguistic and ethnological research.
Het leven van den Tanémbarees (The life of the Tanimbarese), a lengthy monograph that appeared in 1940, continues to be one of the main sources on Tanimbar ethnography.
Petrus Drabbe's works remain the primary source for many languages of the southwestern coastal areas of New Guinea.
[1] In 1962, he received a Zilveren Anjer (Silver Carnation) medal from Prince Bernhard for his many years of linguistic research.