Pálmi Hannesson (3 January 1898, in Skagafjarðarsýsla – 22 November 1956) was an Icelandic naturalist and rector of the Menntaskólinn í Reykjavík.
As well as being prominent among Icelandic students at Copenhagen, he was also an alderman of the Studentergården and was noted for his fluency in Danish.
[1] In the words of Niels Nielsen, Even as a child he felt attracted to the interior, desolate highlands, and it was one of his key experiences that he as a boy was allowed to embark on the adventure to take part in the autumn sheep collections whereby people searched the highlands on horseback up to glaciers.
Throughout his life he retained his childhood love for the countryside and for horse trips, and he considered it his good fortune that his work fell at a time when motorization had not yet become influential in the practice of research on Iceland.
Nonetheless, he continued his scientific work, and was an important host to visiting scientists from Denmark.