MERCATOR, GERARD (the Latin name generally given to GERHARD KAUFFMANN), one of the most celebrated geographers of his time, was born at Rupelmonde in Flanders on the 5th of March 1512. After completing his elementary studies at Bois-le-Duc, he went through a course of philosophy at the university of Louvain, where he took his degree. Having applied himself with extraordinary ardour to the study of geography and mathematics, he soon received the patronage of the Emperor Charles V., and in 1559 was nominated cosmographer to the Duc de Juliers at Doesburg, where he died in 1594, at the advanced age of eighty-three years. He is principally known from having given his name to the projection generally employed in nautical maps, in which the meridians and parallels are represented by straight lines which mutually intersect at right angles. Besides executing tables of chronology and geography, he published many valuable maps, engraved and coloured by his own hand.
His works are,—Chronologia a Mundi exordio ad ann. 1568, Köln., fol., 1569; Tabulae Geographicae ad mentem Ptolemæi restituta, fol., 1578; Globi Terrestis Sculptura, 1541; Globi Celestis Sculptura, 1551; Atlases, 1595, 1628, 1633. He also published two theological works,—Harmonia Evangelistarum, 1592; and De Creatione ac Fabrica Mundi; the latter forming a dissertation prefixed to his Atlas of 1595, and which was condemned by the church for setting forth certain heterodox views respecting the doctrine of original sin.