Samuel Hartlib

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Samuel Hartlieb (ca. 1600 - 1662), was a scientist and teacher, better known in as Samuel Hartlib in England, where he settled permanently, married and died.

Hartlib was born in the Hanseatic city of Elbing, Royal Prussia, (now Elbląg, Poland). He studied at the Gymnasium of Brieg (Brzeg), Königsberg University, and briefly at the University of Cambridge. He moved to England in 1628, unsuccessfully establishing a school in Chichester, and then living in London, as a neighbour of Samuel Pepys in Axe Yard and also in Duke's Place next to the 17th century synagogue in Beavis Marks. He became one of the best-connected intellectual figures of the Commonwealth era, and was responsible for patents, spreading information and fostering learning. He circulated designs for calculators, double-writing instruments, seed-machines and siege engines. In 1655 he wrote 'The Reformed Commonwealth of Bees' in which Christopher Wren had designed and built a glass enclosed bee-hive. The 'Hartlib circle' of contacts and correspondents was one of the foundations of the Royal Society of London which was established a generation later, in 1660. Hartlib died in poverty probably because he was associated with Cromwell and the Commonwealth and so was sidelined after Charles II's Restoration.

He also put much effort into getting Comenius of the Protestant Moravian Brethren to visit England. His letters, in German and English, have been the subject of close modern scholarship.

Hartlib set out with the goal "To record all human knowledge and to make it universally available for the education of all mankind".