Emil Bessels (2 June 1847 – 30 March 1888) was a German zoologist, entomologist, physician, and Arctic researcher who is best known for his controversial role in the attempted but ill-fated American Polaris expedition to the North Pole in 1871.

Circumstantial evidence strongly points to Bessels as the most likely suspect in the death of the expedition's commander, American explorer Charles Francis Hall, by arsenic poisoning.

In 1869, on suggestion from August Petermann, Bessels joined the German North Polar expedition to the Arctic Sea with the aim of investigating the islands of Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya, and surveying the ocean in their vicinity.

In 1875, he took part in another expedition to the American northwestern coast aboard the USS Saranac, but the voyage had to be interrupted after the ship was wrecked in the Seymour Narrows, between Vancouver Island and the mainland.

This work was translated by historian William Barr and released as Polaris: The Chief Scientist's Recollections of the American North Pole Expedition in 2016.