Elisabeth Hanson (née Elisabeth Miller), commercial artist, designer, editor, printmaker, and ecologist, was born to M.F. Miller and Grace Ernst Miller on November 2, 1917, in Columbia, Missouri. Her father was a professor and then dean of the College of Agriculture, and her mother was a botanist. Elisabeth studied graphic art and cartography at Stephens College, and majored in art and minored in English at the University of Missouri, graduating in 1938. During the Depression she worked as a chartist and layout artist for the Curtis Publishing Company in Philadelphia, and as a book designer and editor for the Wisconsin Press in at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1941 during World War II. In 1942 she married nuclear physics PhD student Alfred O. Hanson, who was recruited to work on the Manhattan Project.

The Hansons moved to New Mexico for Alfred’s job at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. While there, Elisabeth studied lithography at the New Mexico Highlands University, Las Vegas under printmaker Elmer "Skinny" Schooley (1916-2007). When the war ended, the Hansons settled permanently in Urbana, Illinois, raising their family and continuing their careers. Elisabeth worked for a variety of publications as a paste-up artist, editor, and production manager.

Elisabeth was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the Piatt County Historical Society, Natural Areas Study Group of Champaign County, Grand Prairie Friends and the Map Committee of Middle Fork Valley Partners. She served one term on the Urbana Park District Citizen’s Advisory Committee. Perhaps her greatest achievement was the result of her long-term study of the pre-settlement landscape of Piatt County, the first government land surveys there, and the first purchases of the public lands as correlating with natural features. This study evolved into a geography department colloquium presented in April 1988. Elisabeth M. Hanson’s highly praised work has been library bound and is entitled East-Central Illinois: Exploring the Beginnings: Landforms & Ecosystems: Territory to Public Domain: Wilderness to Real Estate.

Elisabeth Miller Hanson died on May 14, 2016, in Urbana, Illinois.