Johann Heinrich Zedler (7 January 1706 in Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland) – 21 March 1751 in Leipzig) was a bookseller and publisher. His most important achievement was the creation of a German encyclopedia, the Grosses Universal-Lexicon (Great Universal Lexicon), the largest and most comprehensive German-language encyclopedia developed in the 18th century. Zedler died at the age of 45 in 1751, just a year after the conclusion of the alphabetic Universal-Lexicon. His name lives on with the colloquial name of the encyclopedia, which is known today as "the Zedler".