Gerardus Mercator's Birthday
Next: March 5, 2027
The man who gave us the atlas.
The story
Where it comes from
Gerardus Mercator was born Gerard de Kremer, a shoemaker's son, in Rupelmonde in Flanders on 5 March 1512, and this Story marks his birthday. He studied at Louvain, learned to make globes and instruments, and became the most famous mapmaker of his age. In 1569 he published a world map drawn on a new projection, with the lines of longitude made parallel. On it, a ship's course of constant bearing became a straight line, so a navigator could plot it with a ruler.
How it's celebrated
There is no formal observance, but his name is on maps all over the world, since the Mercator projection is still used for nautical charts. It is a good day to open an atlas, or to compare a Mercator map with a globe and see which countries change size. Schools can use it to ask a simple question: how do you flatten a ball?
Did you know
- Mercator was the first to call a book of maps an 'atlas', after the figure of Atlas holding up the world shown at its front.
- His Atlas was completed by his son and published in 1595, the year after Mercator died.
- To keep courses straight, his projection stretches distances and areas more and more towards the poles, which is why lands in the far north look so large.
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