Christian Andreas Victor Hensen was born on February 10th ,1835, in Schleswig. He studied medicine in Würzburg, Berlin and Kiel. After his PhD in 1895 he taught at the Kiel University and in 1864 became a professor there. Originally his main research interests were the anatomy and physiology of sense organs before he later on became more interested in marine biology.

Along with the zoologist Karl Möbius and the oceanographer Heinrich Adolph Meyer he wrote a study on the ecology of the Kiel Fjord and Bay. At the same time he established the term “Plankton” for organisms drifting freely in the water. His interest in those organisms led to him leading the so-called “Plankton Expedition” in July 1889. During the expedition he developed new quantitative methods for plankton research. Nets specially developed by Hensen enabled the scientists to filter plankton from a 200 meter high water column of 0.1 square meters space. Thereby he was able to assess the amount of plankton in the 200 meter thick upper layer of water.

Furthermore Hensen worked as a chemist and developed a method to gain chemically pure glycogen from animal tissue. This substance – a sugar – nowadays serves as a basis in the manufacture of drugs. Until his death Hensen was the head of the Prussian Marine Committee.

Victor Hensen died on April 5th 1924 in Kiel.