Bust of Gerardus Mercator in Sint-Niklaas, Belgium by Scan The World

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Gerardus Mercator was born 5 March 1512 in Rupelmonde, County of Flanders (in modern-day Belgium). He died 2 December 1594 in Duisburg, Duchy of Cleves (in modern-day Germany). He is renowned as the cartographer who created a world mapbased on a new projection which represented sailing courses of constant bearing as straight lines—an innovation which to this day enhances the simplicity and safety of navigation. In his own day he was the world's most famous geographer but in addition he had interests in theology, philosophy, history, mathematics and magnetism as well as being an accomplished engraver, calligrapher and maker of globes and scientific instruments. Unlike other great scholars of the age he travelled little and his knowledge of geography came from his library of over one thousand books and maps, from his visitors and from his vast correspondence (in six languages) with other scholars, statesmen, travellers, merchants and seamen. Mercator's early maps were in large formats suitable for wall mounting but in the second half of his life he produced over 100 new regional maps in a smaller format suitable for binding into his Atlas of 1595. This was the first appearance of the word Atlas in a geographical context but Mercator used it as a neologism for a treatise (Cosmologia) on the creation, history and description of the universe, not simply a collection of maps. He chose the word as a commemoration of a King Atlas of Mauretania whom he considered to be the first…