John Abele

John E. Abele is the youngest of the three sons of Lt. Cmdr. Mannert L. Abele, whose submarine, USS Grunion, disappeared near Kiska in the Aleutian Islands in July 1942 with all 70 crew members.⁠[1][2]

In 1959 Abele graduated from Amherst College with a degree in philosophy and physics (B.A.).⁠[3][4]

Soon after graduating, Abele gave up plans for a career in physics and joined a small company, Advanced Instruments, where he held sales, technical and general management positions. The company made laboratory instruments such as osmometers and flame photometers and represented MedtronicMedtronicMedtronic plc is a healthcare technology company founded in Minneapolis in 1949 that acquired Covidien in 2015.Open the full entry products, including external pacemakers, in the Northeast, which drew Abele to medical devices.⁠[3][4]

He recalled: “I’ve always loved gadgets,” adding that he later found the people who use the technology “are fascinating—and they’re willing to educate you.”⁠[3]

In 1965 Abele helped found an association to establish standards for medical instruments; on its board he worked with cardiac surgery pioneers including Michael DeBakey, Denton Cooley and Dwight Harken.⁠[3]

After a period of part-time consulting and researching early-stage companies, Abele joined Medi-Tech, a small Massachusetts contract research and development company, in 1969 with an option to buy it, and the next year found an investor to help him do so. One of its products was a steerable multilumen catheter developed by the inventor Itzhak Bentov.⁠[3]

Abele was president of Medi-tech, Inc. from 1970 to 1983.⁠[4]

In 1974 Andreas Gruentzig, who was dilating coronary arteries in animals with home-built balloon catheters, contacted Medi-Tech about a steerable catheter; Abele sent him catheters and visited him in Zurich the next year. When Gruentzig presented his preclinical results at the 1976 American Heart Association Scientific Sessions, Abele introduced him to cardiologist Richard K. Myler, and in 1977 the two performed the first human coronary angioplasty during bypass surgery in San Francisco.⁠[3]

Abele described his role: “My role was to introduce Gruentzig to people in the United States who would be credible.”⁠[3]

In 1979 Abele partnered with former pharmaceutical executive Peter Nicholas to form Boston Scientific to purchase Medi-Tech, with the aim of providing less invasive, more accessible treatments.⁠[3][5]

Abele was a director of Boston Scientific from 1979, serving as treasurer from 1979 to 1992, co-chairman from 1979 to 1995, and vice chairman and founder, Office of the Chairman, from February 1995 to March 1996.⁠[4]

After the company’s founding, Abele became a regular contributor to textbooks, medical journals, televised tutorials and live seminars on angioplasty.⁠[3]

Boston Scientific went public in 1992. Two years later it began a series of acquisitions, including the catheter maker SciMed, that made it a multibillion-dollar business.⁠[3]

In 1996 Abele was first listed as a billionaire on the Forbes 400.⁠[5]

In 1997 Abele founded the Argosy Foundation, which funds projects in a range of fields, favoring those that provide “best practice” examples for others; it has given more than $190 million to charitable causes since 2001.⁠[3][5]

The Argosy Foundation is a private family foundation chaired by Abele; its headquarters and most staff are in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with additional offices in Boulder, Colorado; Shelburne, Vermont; and Birmingham, Alabama.⁠[6]

In the late 1990s Abele took on the role of a “corporate philosopher” at Boston Scientific, articulating its vision and values. He retired in 2005, remained a director until 2011, and was director emeritus until 2017.⁠[3][5]

In 2002 the Abele brothers found information online that helped pinpoint Grunion’s possible location: a Japanese man, Yutaka Iwasaki, had posted a translation of a Japanese maritime journal article describing a clash between the cargo ship Kano Maru and an American submarine. Abele tracked Iwasaki down after a string of 74 e-mails.⁠[2][7]

In August 2006 a side-scan sonar team hired by the brothers located a target nearly a mile deep near Kiska; in August 2007 Abele returned with a 17-person search team, and a remotely operated vehicle recorded about three hours of video of the wreck.⁠[2][1]

From the site he said: “Actually seeing the burial site was touching and in a way rewarding.”⁠[1]

On October 2, 2008, the U.S. Navy’s Submarine Force Pacific Fleet announced that the video and photographs provided by the Abele family confirmed the wreck as Grunion.⁠[2]

On October 12, 2015, Abele received the TCT 2015 Career Achievement Award. TCT Director Martin B. Leon described him as “part philosopher, part engineer, part inventor and part businessman.”⁠[3]

In 2018 the University of Vermont awarded Abele an honorary doctorate of medicine.⁠[5]

Abele is an early investor in the electric aircraft maker BETA Technologies and has been a director since 2023; BETA went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2025.⁠[8][5]

In its March 2026 World’s Billionaires list, ForbesForbesForbes is an American business media brand that began with Forbes magazine, founded by B.C. Forbes in 1917. It is known for rankings such as the Forbes 400, the World’s Billionaires list and 30 Under 30, and operates Forbes.com, ForbesLive events and licensed editions in 81 countries. Since 2014 a majority stake has been held by the Hong Kong investment group Integrated Whale Media; a 2021 plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose acquisition company was terminated in 2022. It is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.Open the full entry estimated the net worth of Abele and his family at $2 billion; its real-time estimate as of November 4, 2026, was about $2.7 billion. Forbes lists the source of wealth as health care, classifies him as self-made and gives his residence as Shelburne, Vermont.⁠[5]

Abele owns The Kingbridge Centre and Institute in Ontario, Canada, a 120-room conference center that provides services and research to business, academia and government and experiments with new methods of promoting collective intelligence.⁠[4][3]

He has chaired the board of the F.I.R.S.T. (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Foundation and has long supported the organization, which uses robotics competitions to stimulate children’s interest in science and technology; he is also a member of the President’s Council of Olin College, a trustee emeritus of Amherst College and a board member of the Rocky Mountain Institute.⁠[4][3]

BETA’s 2026 proxy statement describes him as widely regarded as a pioneer in minimally invasive medicine and gives his age as 89 as of April 14, 2026.⁠[8]

On promoting new technology, Abele said: “When you’re trying to promote a disruptive technology, you have to spend a lot more time getting to know the people who are influential both for and against the procedure.”⁠[3]

Forbes records his remark: “I can be a Yoda. A Yoda can go in and be the honest broker and challenge others in a way that humbles them.”⁠[5]

Argosy Foundation: Official website: https://www.argosyfnd.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[6]