Here is a short biography on L. Ron Hubbard, covering his early years and his adventurous life exploring the world and discovering the true nature of man.
For a taste I am including some of it here with a link to the whole article if you care to read it in full.

Son of a naval commander Harry Ross Hubbard and Ledora May Hubbard, L. Ron Hubbard was born on March 13, 1911 in Tilden, Nebraska. At the age of two, he and his family took up residence on a ranch outside Kalispell, Montana, and from there moved to the state's capital, Helena.

As a young boy he learned much about survival in the rugged Far West - with what he called "its do-and-dare attitudes, it wry humor, cowboy pranks, and make-nothing of the worst and most dangerous." Not only could he ride horses at the age of three and a half, but was soon able to rope and break broncos with the best of them.

L. Ron Hubbard's mother was a rarity in her time. A throughly educated woman, who had attended teacher's college prior to her marriage to Ron's father, she was aptly suited to tutor her young son. Under her guidance, Ron was reading and writing at an early age, and soon satisfying his insatiable curiousity about life with the works of Shakespeare, the Greek philosophers, and other classics.

When his father's naval career necessitated that the family leave Montana for a series of cross-country journeys, Ron's mother was also on hand to help make up for what he missed in school.

It was also through these early years that Ron first encountered another culture, that of the Blackfoot Indians, then still living in isolated settlements on the outskirts of Helena. His particular friend was an elderly medicine man, commonly known as "Old Tom."

Establishing a unique friendship with the normally taciturn Indian, Ron was soon initiated into the various secrets of the tribe, their legends, customs and methods of survival in a harsh environment. At the age of six, he became a blood brother of the Blackfeet, an honor bestowed on few white men.

In early 1923, when Ron was twelve, he and his family moved to Seattle, Washington, where his father was stationed at the local naval base. He joined the Boy Scouts and that year proudly achieved the rank of Boy Scout First Class. The next year he became the youngest Eagle Scout ever, an early indication that he did not plan to live an ordinary life.

At the end of that year, young Ron traveled to the nation's capital via the Panama Canal, meeting Commander Joseph C. Thompson of the US Naval Medical Corps. Commander Thompson was the first officer sent by the US Navy to study under Sigmund Freud, and took it upon himself to pass the essentials of Freudian theory to his young friend. Although keenly interested in the Commander's lessons, Ron was also left with many unanswered questions.

In 1927, at the age of sixteen, Ron took the first of his several voyages across the Pacific to Asia. There, both on his own and in the company of an officer attached to the British legation, he took advantage of this unique opportunity to study Far Eastern culture. Among others he befriended and learned from was a thoroughly insightful Beijing magician who represented the last of the line of Chinese magicians from the court of Kublai Khan.

Although primarily renowned as an entertainer, Old Mayo was also well versed in China's ancient wisdom that had been handed down from generation to generation. Ron passed many evenings in the company of such wise men, eagerly absorbing their words.

It was also through the course of these travels that Ron gained access to the much talked-about but rarely seen Buddhist lamaseries in the Western Hills of China - temples usually off-limits to both local peasants and visiting foreigners.

L. Ron Hubbard Biography

L. Ron Hubbard once wrote,

“A culture is only as great as its dreams, and its dreams are dreamed by artists.”

Those dreams are vital to all of us, for it is the artist who supplies the spark of creativity and the vision that leads us into tomorrow.

Thus, one of the many fields which Mr. L. Ron Hubbard explored and codified is that of art. Through the application of the basic principles he discovered, artists, whether previously successful or not, have been able to succeed in life beyond their expectations.

Mr L. Ron Hubbard - About Artists

“I have lived no cloistered life and hold in contempt the wise man who has not lived and the scholar who will not share. There have been many wiser men than I, but few have traveled as much road. I have seen life from the top down and the bottom up. I know how it looks both ways. And I know there is wisdom and that there is hope.”

L. Ron Hubbard

L. Ron Hubbard Official Web site

L. Ron Hubbard, sensing as early as 1950 where this world was headed wrote, “man can recover to himself some of the happiness, some of the sincerity, some of the love and kindness with which he was created.” And he went on to provide us with the solutions.

“We have the answers to human suffering,” L. Ron Hubbard very truthfully declared, “and they are available to everyone.”

In particular, L. Ron Hubbard spoke of a means to replace intolerance with kindness, criminality with decency, degradation with dignity and honor. In short, L. Ron Hubbard spoke of all that is made possible with his tools for personal ethics and his nonreligious moral code, The Way to Happiness, and thus all L. Ron Hubbard himself stood for as this century’s most relevant humanitarian.

"We have the answers to human suffering," L. Ron Hubbard very truthfully declared, "and they are available to everyone." In particular, he spoke of a means to replace intolerance with kindness, criminality with decency, degradation with dignity and honor. In short, he spoke of all that is made possible with his tools for personal ethics and his nonreligious moral code, The Way to Happiness, and thus all he himself stood for as this century’s most relevant humanitarian.