| Emil Christian Hansen | |
| Birth Place: | Ribe |
| Nationality: | Danish |
| Field: | Mycology |
| Work Institutions: | Carlsberg Laboratory |
| Known For: | Saccharomyces carlsbergensis |
| Author Abbrev Bot: | E.C.Hansen |
Emil Christian Hansen (8 May 1842 – 27 August 1909) was a Danish mycologist and fermentation physiologist.
Hansen was born in Ribe to Joseph Christian Hansen, a house-painter, and his wife Ane Catherina Dyhre.[1]
Between 1874 and 1875 he edited and distributed an mycological exsiccata work, namely Fungorum fimicolorum exempl. exsiccati, with 350 numbered specimen units.[2] He was awarded a gold medal in 1876 for an essay on fungi, titled De danske Gjødningssvampe.[3] During his days as a university student in Copenhagen, he worked as an unpaid assistant to zoologist Japetus Steenstrup (1813–1897).
In 1876, with Alfred Jørgensen (1848–1925), he published a Danish translation of Charles Darwin’s "The Voyage of the Beagle"; Rejse om Jorden. From 1879 to 1909, he was director of the physiological department at Carlsberg Laboratory.[4]
Hired by the Carlsberg Laboratory in Copenhagen in 1879,[5] he became the first to isolate a pure cell of yeast in 1883, and after combining it with a sugary solution, produced more yeast than was in a yeast bank. It was named as Saccharomyces carlsbergensis after the laboratory, and is the yeast from which are derived, all yeasts used in lager beers.[6] See Fermentation, Yeast.
Hansen is the taxonomic authority of the fungal genus Anixiopsis (1897) from the family Onygenaceae.[7]
He was honoured in 1911, when botanist H. Zikes published Hanseniaspora, which is a genus of yeasts.[8]