32 Facts About Samuel Hartlib

Samuel Hartlib was a noted promoter and writer in fields that included science, medicine, agriculture, politics and education.

Samuel Hartlib was a contemporary of Robert Boyle, whom he knew well, and a neighbour of Samuel Pepys in Axe Yard, London, in the early 1660s.

Samuel Hartlib studied briefly at the University of Cambridge upon arriving in England.

Samuel Hartlib kept in touch with an array of contacts from high philosophers to gentleman farmers.

Samuel Hartlib maintained a voluminous correspondence, lost in 1667, but much recovered since 1945; it is housed in a special Hartlib collection at the University of Sheffield, England.

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Samuel Hartlib became one of the best-connected intellectual figures of the Commonwealth era.

Samuel Hartlib was responsible for patents, spreading information and fostering learning.

Samuel Hartlib circulated designs for calculators, double-writing instruments, seed machines and siege engines.

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

Samuel Hartlib's work has been compared to modern internet search engines.

Samuel Hartlib was born in Elbing, Royal Prussia, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Samuel Hartlib's mother was the daughter of a rich English merchant in Danzig.

Samuel Hartlib's father is said to have been a refugee merchant from Poland.

Samuel Hartlib studied at the Gymnasium in Brieg and at the Albertina.

Samuel Hartlib went on to Herborn Academy, where he studied under Johannes Heinrich Alsted and Johannes Bisterfeld.

Samuel Hartlib planned a school for the sons of gentlemen, to be conducted on new principles, and this probably was the occasion of his friend John Milton's Tractate on Education, addressed to him in 1644, and of William Petty's Two Letters on the same subject, in 1647 and 1648.

Samuel Hartlib lost his pension, which had already fallen into arrears.

In 1629 Samuel Hartlib married Mary Burmingham, daughter of Philip Burmingham; she died about 1660.

Samuel Hartlib's family life is rather poorly documented: one useful source is the Diary of Samuel Pepys, as Pepys was a close neighbour of the Hartlib family in Axe Yard in the early 1660s and a friend of Hartlib's son Samuel Jr, a clerk in government service.

Samuel Hartlib published two studies of Comenius's work: Conatuum Comenianorum praeludia and Comenii pansophiae prodromus et didactica dissertatio.

Samuel Hartlib put effort into getting Comenius, of the Protestant Moravian Brethren, to visit England.

Samuel Hartlib's presence failed to transform the position in education, though substantial literature grew up, particularly on university reform, where Oliver Cromwell set up a new institution.

Samuel Hartlib failed except for a small pension for himself but gathered like-minded others: Dury, John Milton, Kenelm Digby, William Petty, and his son-in-law Frederick Clod.

In 1641, Samuel Hartlib wrote Relation of that which hath been lately attempted to procure Ecclesiastical Peace among Protestants.

Samuel Hartlib valued knowledge: anything to raise crop yields or cure disease.

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Samuel Hartlib worked to spread Dutch farming practices in England, such as the use of nitrogenous crops like cabbage to replenish the nitrogen in the soil and raise the next season's yield.

Samuel Hartlib corresponded with many landowners and academics in his quest for knowledge.

From 1650 Samuel Hartlib had an interest in and influence on fruit husbandry.

Samuel Hartlib introduced John Beale, another author on orchards, to John Evelyn, who would eventually write an important work in the field, Sylva.

In 1655 Samuel Hartlib wrote The Reformed Commonwealth of Bees, featuring a transparent glass beehive to a design by Christopher Wren.

Samuel Hartlib was open-minded, and often tested the ideas and theories of his correspondents.

Samuel Hartlib was interested in theories and practices that modern science would deem irrational, or superstitious – for example, sympathetic medicine, based on the idea that things in nature that bore a resemblance to an ailment could be used to treat it.