Pabst received in 1925 his bachelor's degree at the
University of Illinois and in 1928 his Ph.D. in geology and mineralogy at the
University of California, Berkeley under George D. Louderbeck with a thesis on mineral
inclusions in the granitic
plutons of the
Sierra Nevada. For the academic year 1928/29 he won an
American-Scandinavian Foundation fellowship for postdoctoral study; on this postdoc under
Victor Moritz Goldschmidt in
Oslo, Pabst married Gudrun Lisabeth Bert. After returning to Berkeley, he became in 1929 an instructor, in 1931 an assistant professor, in 1936 an associate professor, and in 1944 a full professor. In the academic year 1938/39 he was a Guggenheim Fellow at the
Natural History Museum in
London and in the academic year 1955/56 a Fulbright Fellow at the
University of Vienna. In 1967 he retired as professor emeritus, but continued to do research at U. C. Berkeley and published steadily until 1984. He was in the academic year 1967/68 a visiting professor of mineralogy und crystallography at the
University of Nevada, Reno and in the academic year 1968/69 a visiting professor of mineralogy at the
University of Oregon. He was also in the academic year 1970/71 a Fulbright Visiting Professor at the University of Berlin and the University of Kiel. Pabst was for many years on the editorial board of
American Mineralogist. He first described various minerals, among which are
huttonite and
macdonaldite. ==Awards and honors==