[3] He was born in Sobotište[3] (then known as Szobotist), in the Nyitra County of the Kingdom of Hungary (present-day Slovakia) where he attended primary school.

He decided not to become a pastor, but was unable to continue his studies in Jena, so he came to his brother in the Croatian town of Brod na Savi in November 1838.

Soon thereafter, he made contact with Ljudevit Gaj, the central figure of the Croatian Illyrian movement, and in autumn 1839 started working as a printer for Franjo Župan in Zagreb.

Izbor zakonah, poveljah i spisah, znamenitih za državno pravo kraljevine dalmatinsko-hrvatsko-slavonske od god.

His activities often drew him to conflict with Croatian Vukovians who advocated pure folk language and derisively called his neologisms and borrowings šulekizmi ("Šulekisms").

Most of his coinages used in modern Croatian include words in chemistry (kisik "oxygen", vodik "hydrogen", dušik "nitrogen") and other technical fields (plin "gas", plinomjer "gas meter", narječje "dialect", glazba "music", skladba "composition", obrazac "template; form", sustav "system", tlak "pressure", tlakomjer "barometer", zemljovid "map", uzor "role model", pojam "concept", tvrtka "company", uradak "piece of work", zdravstvo "healthcare").