Samuel Pufendorf (1632-94), German jurist. Pufendorf was born at Dorfchemnitz in Saxony and was educated at the University of Leipzig. He started studying theology but soon changed to study law. He then went on to Jena, where he read works by Grotius, Hobbes and Descartes. After university he became a private tutor to a Swedish nobleman in Copenhagen. During the hostilities with Sweden in 1658-9 Pufendorf was imprisoned for eight months, in which time he developed the principles of Hobbes and Grotius into a new system of universal law. He published this in 1661 as the Elementa juriprudentiae universalis. he was called to the chairs of law at Heidelberg then at Lund in Sweden. He continued to refine his theories of the law of nature and of nations and was a large influence on later writers such as Locke, Rousseau and Diderot. This engraving comes from an edition of Pufendorf's Jure naturae et gentium of 1744.