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Antique map of Luxemburg - Trier A coloured copper-engraving. Size: 36,5×47 cm. Gerardus Mercator (1512-1594) was a Flemish cartographer. He was born Gheert Cremer (or Gerard de Cremere) in Rupelmonde. "Mercator" is the Latinized form of his name. It means "merchant". He was educated in’s-Hertogenbosch and at theUniversity of Leuven. Despite his fame as a cartographer, Mercator's main source of income came through his craftmanship of mathematical instruments. He returned to Leuven and worked with Gemma Frisius and Gaspar Myrica. They worked together from 1535 to 1536 to construct a terrestrial globe although the role of Mercator in the project was not primarily as a cartographer, but as a highly skilled engraver of brass plates. Mercator's own independent map-making only began when he produced a map of Palestine in 1537, and this was followed by another map of the world (1538) and a map of Flanders (1540). During this period he learned Italic script since it was the most suitable type of script for copper engraving of maps. For nearly sixty years, during the most important and exciting period in the story of modern map making, Gerard Mercator was the supreme cartographer. Mercator was charged with heresy in 1544 due to his sympathy for Protestant beliefs and suspicions about his frequent travels. He was in prison for seven months before the charges were dropped, possibly because of intervention from the university authorities. In 1552, he moved toDuisburg. He opened a cartographic workshop, where he completed a six-panel map of Europe in 1554. He also worked as a surveyor for the city. His motives for moving to Duisburg are not clear. Mercator might have left the Netherlands for religious reasons or because he was informed about the plans to found a university. He taught mathematics at the academic college of Duisburg. After producing several maps he was appointed Court Cosmographer to Wilhelm, Duke of Jülich-Cleves-Berg in 1564. He constructed a new chart and first used it in 1569; it had parallel lines of longitude to aid navigation by sea, as compass courses could be marked as straight lines. He took the word atlas to describe a collection of maps, and encouraged Abraham Ortelius to compile the first modern world atlas,Theatrum Orbis Terrarum in 1570. He produced his own atlas in a number of parts, the first of which was published in 1578 and consisted of corrected versions of the maps of Ptolemy (though introducing a number of new errors). His work changed land surveying and his researches and calculations led him to break away from Ptolemy's conception of the size and outline of the Continents, drastically reducing the longitudinal length of Europe and Asia and altering the shape of the Old World as visualized in the early sixteenth century. Maps of France Germany and the Netherlands were added in 1585 and of the Balkans and Greece in 1588, further maps were published in 1595 His later life was devoted to the preparation of his 3-volume collection of maps to which, for the first time, the word 'Atlas' was applied. The word was chosen, he wrote, 'to honour the Titan, Atlas, King of Mauritania, a learned philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer'. The first two parts of the Atlas were published in 1585 and 1589 and the third, with the first two making a complete edition, in 1595 the year after Mercator’s death. After moving to Duisburg Mercator never left the city and died there a respected and wealthy citizen .After his death by his son Rumold Mercator. After a second complete edition in 1602, the map plates were bought in 1604 by Jodocus Hondius who, with his sons, Jodocus II and Henricus, published enlarged editions, which dominated the map market for the following twenty to thirty years