Eberhard Werner Happel (1647–1690) was a German novelist, publicist, pedagogue, translator and polymath. In his numerous works he made an attempt to make the encyclopedic knowledge of contemporary intellectuals comprehensible for a wide readership and to integrate it into general culture. His exhibited work, the Relationes curiosae, despite of its book-like form, was one of the first popular science journals. The series published between 1681–1691 under the title Grösste Denckwürdigkeiten der Welt (“Greatest wonders of the world”), dealt with different mathematical, physical and historical curiosities.
