Dr. Hartman was born in Berlin, Germany in 1910. He grew up there through WWI and into the early years of WWII. As a schoolboy, he was required to repeat the loyalty oath everyday: "I was born to die for Germany." Even at a very early age Hartman knew that there was something fundamentally wrong with that idea, which ultimately set the background for his life’s work.

Early in his career he was a practicing judge in Germany during the rise of the Hitler Reich. As he became witness to the atrocities against the people of Germany he began to speak out against them. He believed in the infinite value of a human life, and that the state has a moral obligation to keep violent hands off that life. War, he thought, is madness. His rejection of all violent creeds, whether of Communism, Nazism, or Fascism, which he expressed in speeches and articles, brought him into conflict with the Nazi party, and forced him to leave Germany to escape imprisonment.

He went on to attend the German College of Political Science, the University of Paris, the London School of Economics, and Berlin University, where he received the LL.B. in 1932. In 1941, he moved to the United States. Over the years, he earned PhD's in Mathematics, Philosophy and Law. He held more than fifty lectureships in the United States, Canada, Latin America, and Europe, and was a research professor of Philosophy at the University of Tennessee.

With what he had witnessed in Germany, Dr. Hartman dedicated his life to answering the question, "What is good?" - and to answer the question in such a way that "good" could be mathematically organized to help preserve and enhance the value of human life. His work in Axiology (the science of value - how we think) resulted in the creation of the Hartman Value Profile instrument which provides a scientific way to deductively measure people's thought process that influence attitude, behavior, personality, beliefs, and emotions that ultimately become actions and results.

Dr. Hartman acquired a worldwide reputation as a leader with a deep understanding of Philosophy and a genius for Mathematics, as well as the author of ten books and more than 100 articles, and translator of six books.

Dr. Hartman earned praise and esteem in the international community and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1972.