Swedish botanist and anthropologist. Born at Őrebro, Sweden, Carl Vilhelm Hartman, son and grandson of the Swedish botanists Carl Hartman (1824-1884) and Carl Johan Hartman (1790-1849), spent ten years studying botany and horticulture at home and abroad on scholarships from the Swedish Royal Academy of Science and Academy of Agriculture.

In 1890 he joined the Norwegian ethnographer Carl Sofus Lumholtz on a three-year expedition to the Sierra Madre Occidental as a botanist. Collecting with F.E. Lloyd, he discovered about 23 new species, which were reported by B.L. Robinson and M.L. Fernald in 1895, and conducted ethnobotanical studies of the usage of plants by the indigenous populations. Afterwards he accompanied Lumholtz to the Columbian Expedition in Chicago, where he spent six months organising anthropological exhibits, and in 1894 published his first essay, "The Indians of Northwestern Mexico".

Back in Stockholm he became director of the Bergian Gardens, but his interest had turned from botany to anthropology since working in Mexico, and after only two years he resigned to lead an ethnographic and archaeological expedition to Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Guatemala (1896-1899). He subsequently worked as curator of the Ethnographic Department of the Riksmuseum in Stockholm (1899-1902); ethnologist and curator at the Carnegie Museum in Washington (1903-1908), during which time he made another trip to Costa Rica; and retired as professor and curator of ethnography at the Riksmuseum (1908-1923). His major publications included two monographs on archaeological research in Costa Rica (1901 and 1907) and the series "Popular Ethnological Papers" (1911-1917).