Peter Nielsen

Peter Nielsen (1829 to 1897) was a Danish botanist and plant pathologist, born at a farm in Vonsbæk parish in the Duchy of Schleswig. He graduated in 1857 from Jelling Statsseminarium in Vejle, worked at Flakkebjerg Institute from 1857 to 1859 and in 1859 became a school teacher at Ørslev on Zealand, where he studied the local flora. He was particularly interested in plants useful to agriculture and in plant pathogens, wrote prolifically on these topics and made meticulous studies of rust fungi. He was the first to describe the host alternation of Puccinia poarum between grasses and Tussilago farfara, and he issued the exsiccata Exsiccatsamling af Characeer navnlig fra Danmark.