Samuel Dyer (Chinese: 台約爾, 20 February 1804 – 24 October 1843) was a British Protestant Christian missionary to China in the Congregationalist tradition who worked among the Chinese in Malaysia. He arrived in Penang in 1827. Dyer, his wife Maria, and their family lived in Malacca and then in Singapore. He was known as a typographer for creating a steel typeface of Chinese characters for printing to replace traditional wood blocks. Dyer's type was accurate, aesthetically pleasing, durable, and practical.

Samuel Dyer was born at the Royal Greenwich Hospital, England, to John Dyer and Eliza (Seager). He was the fifth of the eight Dyer children. His father was a secretary of the Royal Hospital for Seaman and later became Chief clerk of the Admiralty in 1820. John was also an acquaintance of Robert Morrison, who was soon to become the first Protestant missionary to China. Morrison and his Chinese tutor Yong Sam-tek visited the Dyer home in Greenwich during Morrison's period of study in medicine and astronomy between 1805 and 1806.

Dyer was schooled at home until he was 12 and then educated in a boarding school at Woolwich, in south-east London from 1816, superintended by the Rev. John Bickerdike, a minister with the English Dissenters.

In 1820 he experienced a conversion to Christ at Thomas Wilson's Paddington Chapel, in Paddington, Northwest London, under ministry of the Rev. James Stratten, and soon Dyer began teaching Sunday school there. In 1822 he was formally admitted into membership.

Dyer later wrote about his time there:

Paddington lives in my warmest affections. It was there that I kneeled on the separating line between Christ and the world. I kneeled and prayed for strength to side with Christ; I arose, and was inwardly assisted to turn my back upon the world. And from that good day to this, Jesus has been precious to my soul.

He studied law and mathematics at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, but in 1823 he withdrew from University in his fifth term, refusing for conscience sake to declare himself a member of Church of England to graduate. While studying law, he read a pamphlet from his father's study, the "Memoir of Mrs. Charles Mead of the London Missionary Society in Travancore, India", which afterwards turned his thoughts to the missionary service that would occupy the rest of his life. The pamphlet consisted of sermon preached at Mrs. Mead's funeral, '’All for Christ and the Good of Souls'’, the text of which is taken from Rev. 12:11: "and they loved not their lives unto the death."

In '’A Sketch of Mr. Dyer's Life and Character'’, his wife Maria would later write, "The reading of the pamphlet 'Memoir of Mrs. Mead' so powerfully impressed his mind with the importance of consecrating himself to missionary work, that when he began to study again, on Monday morning, he found he could not proceed; and every time he read this Memoir it had the same effect: so that at last he determined to give up the Bar, and devote himself to the work of Christ among the heathen."