Named in memory of George O. Abell (1927–1983), astronomer at the University of California at Los Angeles, noted author, lecturer, educator, popularizer of astronomy and long-time director of the Summer Science Program of Thacher School in Ojai, California. As a graduate student, he took a large fraction of the plates for the Palomar-National Geographic Sky Survey, and his analysis of them produced the Abell catalogue of rich clusters of galaxies. In addition, he discovered a new class of planetary nebulae and showed that planetary nebulae represent a normal phase in the evolution of solar-mass stars in the disks of galaxies. (M 11162) _ _.