Gerardus Mercator was born on March 5,1512 and died on December 2, 1594. Geradus Mercator was a cartographer, born in Rupelmonde in the Hasburg County of Flanders, part of the Holy Roman Empire. He is remembered for the Mercator projection world map, which is named after him. This proved very useful to many later explorers. Geradus Mercators parents were Hubert and Emerentia Kremer. Hubert Kremer worked the land and also was a cobbler, that is a shoemaker. Hubert Emerentia were people of lowly status but Hubert had a brother Gisbert who had been educated at Louvain University and was a priest in Rupelmonde, where Gisbert was a priest, that Gerard was born. He was the seventh child of Hubert and Emerentia who, a few weeks after the birth, returned to their home town of Ganglet.
Mercator was born Gerard de Cremer in the Flemish town of Rupelmonde to parents from Gangelt in the Duchy of Julich, where he was raised. “Mercator” is the Latinized form of his name. It means “merchant”. He was educated in ‘s-Hertogenbosch by the famous humanist Macropedius and at the University of Leuven. Despite Mercator’s fame as a cartographer, his main source of income came through his craftsmanship of mathematical instruments. In Leuven, he worked with Gemma Frisius and Gasper Myrica from 1535 to 1536to construct a terrestiral globe, although the role of Mercator in the project was not primarily as a cartographer, but rather as a highly skilled engraver of brass plates. Mercator’s own independent map-making began of the world (1538) and a map of Flanders in (1540). During this period he learned Italic script because it was the most suitable type of script for copper engraving of maps. He wrote the first instruction book of Italic script published in northern Europe. Mercator was charged with heresy in 1544 on the basis of his sympathy for protesting. In September 1536 Mercator married Barbara and their first child Arnold. They had three sons and three daughters. In 1552, he moved to Duisburg, one of the major cites in Duchy of Cleves, and opened a cartographic workshop where he completed a six-panel map of Europe.
Gerardus started making his own map-making in 1537 his first map was the map of Flanders. He later constructed a new chart and it was first used in 1569. It had parallel lines of longitude to aid navigation by sea, as compass courses could be marked as straight lines. Mercator’s major accomplishment was the “Mercator projection”. The “Mercator projection” is a cylinder map projection presented by the Flemish geographer and cartographer Gerardus Mercator, in 1569. It became the standard map projection for nautical purposes because of its ability to represent lines
