Karl Adolph Hansen (1851 – 1920) was a German

botanist Botany, also called plant science, is the branch of natural science and biology studying plants, especially Plant anatomy, their anatomy, Plant taxonomy, taxonomy, and Plant ecology, ecology. A botanist or plant scientist is a scientist who s ...

. He was born in

Hamburg Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...

and graduated in 1887 at the

University of Würzburg The Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg (also referred to as the University of Würzburg, in German ''Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg'') is a public research university in Würzburg, Germany. Founded in 1402, it is one of the ol ...

with a thesis entitled "Geschichte der Assimilation und Chlorophyllfunktion" (supervised by

Julius Sachs Julius Sachs (July 6, 1849 – February 2, 1934) was an American educator, founder of the Sachs Collegiate Institute who belongs to the Goldman–Sachs family of bankers. Sachs was born on July 6, 1849, in Baltimore. After taking his A.B. at ...

). He was professor of

botany Botany, also called plant science, is the branch of natural science and biology studying plants, especially Plant anatomy, their anatomy, Plant taxonomy, taxonomy, and Plant ecology, ecology. A botanist or plant scientist is a scientist who s ...

at the Justus Liebig-Universität Gießen 1891-1920. He had very broad academic interests, including history and archaeology. However, he always worked alone, supervised very few doctoral students (4 in 39 years), and stood outside the development of experimental physiological botany among his contemporaries. Hansen wrote scholarly works on Goethe's '' Metamorphosis of Plants'' and had an aggressive dispute over this hypothesis with

Houston Stewart Chamberlain Houston Stewart Chamberlain (; 9 September 1855 – 9 January 1927) was a British-German-French philosopher who wrote works about political philosophy and natural science. His writing promoted German ethnonationalism, antisemitism, scientific r ...

. He died in

Giessen Giessen, spelled in German (), is a town in the Germany, German States of Germany, state () of Hesse, capital of both the Giessen (district), district of Giessen and the Giessen (region), administrative region of Giessen. The population is appro ...

The wind controversy with Eugenius Warming

In 1901, Hansen wrote a treatise of the

dune A dune is a landform composed of wind- or water-driven sand. It typically takes the form of a mound, ridge, or hill. An area with dunes is called a dune system or a dune complex. A large dune complex is called a dune field, while broad, flat ...

vegetation of the

East Frisian Islands The East Frisian Islands (, ; ; ) are a chain of islands in the North Sea, off the coast of East Frisia in Lower Saxony, Germany. The islands extend for some from west to east between the mouths of the Ems and Jade / Weser rivers and lie about ...

, in which he proposed

salt In common usage, salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl). When used in food, especially in granulated form, it is more formally called table salt. In the form of a natural crystalline mineral, salt is also known as r ...

as the main plant-distributing factor. He thereby neglected previous work by Warming and Raunkiær contending the importance of the wind.

Eugenius Warming Johannes Eugenius Bülow Warming (3 November 1841 – 2 April 1924), known as Eugen Warming, was a Danish botanist and a main founding figure of the scientific discipline of ecology. Warming wrote the first textbook (1895) on plant ecology, ta ...

strongly criticised Hansen's work and Hansen returned by criticising Warming's '' Lehrbuch der ökologischen Pflanzengeographie'', to which Warming gave another polemic reply.Warming, E. (1902?) Die Windfrage: fortgesetzte Anmerkungen zu Prof. Ad. Hansen's Publicationen über den Wind. Englers Botanische Jahrbücher, vol. 32 Beiblatt, p. 25-36.

Selected scientific works

*Hansen, Ad. (1882) Geschichte der Assimilation und Chlorophyllfunction. Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann, 90 pp. *Hansen, Ad. (1885) Die Ernährung der Pflanzen. Leipzig und Prag, Freytag & Tempsky, 1885. 268 pp. (Das Wissen der Gegenwart, vol. 38.) * ''Systematische Charakteristik der medicinisch-wichtigen Pflanzenfamilien, nebst Angabe der Abstammung der wichtigeren Arzneistoffe des Pflanzenreichs'' . Stahel, Würzburg 188
Digital edition
by the

University and State Library Düsseldorf The University and State Library Düsseldorf (, abbreviated ULB Düsseldorf) is a central service institution of Heinrich Heine University. Along with Bonn and Münster, it is also one of the three State Libraries of North Rhine-Westphalia. ...

*Hansen, Ad. (1907) Goethes Metamorphose der Pflanzen. Geschichte einer botanischen Hypothese. 2 Teile. Gießen: Alfred Töpelmann * ''Die Pflanze : mit 33 Abb.''. Göschen, Berlin 191
Digital edition
by the

*Hansen, Ad. (1919) Goethes Morphologie (Metamorphose der Planzen und Osteologie) Ein Beitrag zum sachlichen und philosophischen Verständnis und zur Kritik der morphologischen Begriffsbildung. Giessen: Alfred Töpelmann, 1919. 200 pp.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hansen, Adolf 19th-century German botanists University of Würzburg alumni Academic staff of the University of Giessen 1851 births 1920 deaths 20th-century German botanists Scientists from Hamburg