Samuel Augustini, ab Hortis

* Kakaslomnic, 5 August 1729 – † Szepesszombat, 5 August 1792 / Lutheran priest, pioneer of Gypsy research in Hungary ; ; His father was a pastor in Poprad, his great-grandfather, Keresztély Augustini, ab Hortis, a doctor and naturalist. He graduated from high school in Levoča, then studied history, geography, Latin and Greek at the Lutheran lyceum in Banská Bystrica. In 1746, he initially studied law in Prešov, but later switched to theology. In 1754, he began attending university in Wittenberg, but after six months he transferred to Berlin and completed his studies there in 1757. From 1758 to 1792, he was a teacher in Keszthely, teaching the basics of arithmetic and philosophy to students. On October 13, 1761, he was ordained as a pastor in Szepesszombat and served there until his death. Many consider his most significant work to be his 39-part series of articles published in the Viennese journal Allergnädigst priviligerte Anzeigen aus sämtlich kaiserlich-königlichen Erbländern in 1775–1776, which is considered an early masterpiece of professional Gypsy research. This text was published in Slovak in 1995 and in Hungarian in 2009 under the title On the current state of the Gypsies of Hungary, their special customs and lifestyle, as well as their other characteristics and circumstances. He also wrote botanical and mineralogical papers, and collected many minerals during his trips to the Tatra Mountains. He also published three mineralogical works: ; On Hungarian Gemstones, 1773, On common or semi-precious stones in Hungary, 1773, On petrifications in Hungary, 1774. He wrote a topography of the Poprad River valley (Topographische Beschreibung des Flusses Poprad oder Popper in der Zips aus dem Jahre 1782). He wrote a work on the old Tatra gold and treasure hunters and sorcerers (Von den fremden Gold- und Schatzgräbern, 1775). He also used many earlier publications that are no longer available, so his published texts on the Tatra Mountains, the Spiš Mountains and Liptov are valuable sources.