Biographical series includes a variety of material reflecting many aspects of Abraham's personal and professional life. A number of his school notebooks survive, along with eighteen undergraduate notebooks. There are letters of congratulation on his election to the Fellowship of the Royal Society, 1958, and on his receipt of the Royal Medal of the Royal Society in 1973, and correspondence and papers relating to other honours and awards. Included also are correspondence concerning the history of antibiotics (mostly 1990s), correspondence and papers relating to his support of various charities and appeals later in his life, appointments diaries (1963-1992), and a sequence of personal correspondence, 1974-1998.

University of Oxford series is short. The material includes correspondence and papers relating to the business of Lincoln College (1960-1996), of which Abraham was a Fellow, and building work and administration at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology (1954-1994). Other papers, chiefly concerning social and fundraising events, reflect his associations with other Oxford colleges and organisations, sometimes through donations by the Abraham Trusts.

Research series, presents extensive and diverse material spanning some sixty years of Abraham's biochemical research. There are notebooks, correspondence, publications and other papers, chiefly relating to research on cephalosporins and related substances by Abraham's team and other organisations. There are a few of his notebooks dating from his period at the Dyson Perrins Laboratory and his early years at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology; one survives from his year in Stockholm (1938/1939) as a Rockefeller Travelling Fellow. The early Dunn School notebooks include details of experiments on penicillin from 1940. There is significant coverage of the collaborative research with the Antibiotics Research Station of the Medical Research Council on the cephalosporium culture fluids in the 1950s, the work that led to the isolation of Cephalosporin C and the determination of its chemical structure. A large body of correspondence and papers relates to the involvement, through to the 1990s, of the National Research Development Corporation in the on-going research on the cephalosporin antibiotics and their commercial exploitation, the participation of licensed pharmaceutical companies such as Squibb, and legal cases concerning cephalosporin patents in which Abraham provided expert opinion. Experimental work by Abraham's team on a range antibiotics and related compounds, including Cephalosporin C, Bacilysin and B-lactamases, is documented by a large group of laboratory notebooks dating from 1946 to 1983. They are mostly the work of Abraham's research assistants, though a few are in his hand. A small body of correspondence and papers relates to research on bacilysin from 1957, and there is also some scientific correspondence of a more general nature.

Publications series comprises Abraham's drafts of scientific papers, book reviews and other articles, dating from 1956 to 1998, and editorial correspondence. Of particular interest are the drafts and correspondence relating to his Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society articles for Howard Florey (1971) and Ernst Chain (1983). The correspondence highlights the sensitive issues Abraham had to negotiate in the preparation and drafting of the Memoirs. There are also drafts of other obituaries he wrote for Florey and Chain.

Lectures and broadcasts series, principally comprises drafts and correspondence relating to public lectures given by Abraham from c.1960 to 1993. Most lectures are on the origin and development of B-lactam antibiotics; one given at the National Portrait Gallery in 1993 surveys the discoveries of Sir Alexander Fleming. A small amount of lecture material used by Abraham for teaching is included. The papers relating to broadcasts is slight, chiefly concerning Abraham's contributions to various television and radio programmes on penicillin, the cephalosporins and the work of Howard Florey, dating from 1962 to 1991.

Visits and conferences series covers the period 1955 to 1995. The material chiefly covers Abraham's participation in symposia and conferences on chemotherapy, antibiotics, and, in some cases, specifically B-lactam antibiotics. On longer stays abroad he sometimes combined attendance at symposia with lectures at universities and visits to pharmaceutical laboratories. Among the visits and conferences for which significant documentation survives are the International Congresses of Chemotherapy held in Vienna, 1967 and 1983; the Interscience Conferences on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy held in Chicago, 1967 and 1981; and a visit to India in January 1985, which included the Asian Congress of Pharmacology in New Delhi. Included are drafts of papers given by Abraham at symposia.

Societies and organisations series presents material covering Abraham's involvement in many British scientific organisations, including the Biochemical Society, the Chemical Society, the Society for General Microbiology, and the Royal Society. Overseas organisations are represented by the American Academy for Arts and Sciences and the Australian National University (John Curtin School of Medical Research). Much of the correspondence in this section is general in nature, though there is material relating to lectures and addresses given by Abraham, such as the 5th L.P. Garrod Lecture for the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy in 1986.

Correspondence series principally consists of scientific correspondence, 1944-1998, arranged by individual or country. The correspondents include some colleagues of Abraham, such as Norman Heatley, Henry Harris, and Guy Newton, research assistants and workers in Abraham's laboratory, and scientists in other institutions. The correspondence arranged by country reflects Abraham's strong interest in antibiotics research overseas, and documents visits to many countries for participation in conferences and meetings. There is also a short sequence of material concerning references and recommendations.

Non-text material series largely consists of photographs of Abraham, with a few of colleagues such as Guy Newton, dating from 1930-1995. Included are school photographs, portraits from Abraham's early career, and several showing him with colleagues and fellow scientists taken at conferences or functions. There are also a few lecture slides and videotapes, one recording an event at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, at which Abraham spoke, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the published paper on the therapeutic application of penicillin.