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Philip H. Abelson (1913-2004), a graduate of Washington State College (B.S., chemistry 1933; M.S., physics 1935), was a prominent American scientist who served as editor of the journal Science from 1962 to 1985. He earned his Ph.D. in nuclear physics (1939) from the University of California, Berkeley. During World War II, Abelson worked at the Naval Research Laboratory, where he developed the thermal diffusion process for separation of Uranium-235 from Uranium-238, and worked on the development of nuclear reactors for use on submarines. He spent most of his career at the Carnegie Institution of Washington (now the Carnegie Institution for Science), where he continued to conduct research in nuclear physics, and also pursued research questions in other science disciplines, particularly biochemistry and microbiology. With his colleague Edwin McMillan, he discovered the element Neptunium.

Neva Martin Abelson (1910-2000) met Philip Abelson at Washington State College, where both were students in chemistry. She earned a B.S. in chemistry in 1934, and an M.D. from Johns Hopkins in 1942. She was a distinguished scientist, with a long career in biomedical research and medical school teaching. With Louis K. Diamond, she developed the Rhesus factor test that is now routinely conducted for pregnant women, a response to life-threatening Rh factor incompatibility that often caused illness and death in affected newborns.