GerardusMercator
About
Thanks to Mercator, you call a collection of maps an atlas. Thanks to Mercator, seafarers can plot their course precisely on a map. Thanks in part to Mercator, you drive from A to B, relying on your GPS.
Gerardus Mercator was born in Flanders and began his remarkable scientific career here. In this region, science and art flourished as never before. The keenest thinkers and the most skilled makers gained new knowledge by observing and measuring. With that knowledge, they set to work to create. Knowledge became a raw material.
Timeline
- 1512
A world of measuring and ordering
Gerardus is born in Rupelmonde, the son of a shoemaker. In the town where the Rupel and the Scheldt meet, science and trade meet too. From an early age, Mercator shows a remarkable talent for measuring and knowing.
- From 1540
Intellectual craftsmanship
Mercator becomes a leading cartographer and maker of measuring instruments. In his workshop he fashions groundbreaking globes, astrolabes, armillary spheres and quadrants. His craftsmanship brings him into contact with the most prominent printers, scholars and powerholders of his time. For Charles V, Mercator makes a terrestrial globe that his contemporaries consider a masterpiece.
- 1569
Mapping the world
With mathematical ingenuity, Mercator develops a new way of depicting the Earth on a map. Travel over long distances becomes more reliable, stimulating trade across the seven seas. The maps made by the shoemaker’s son still shape your view of the world today.
Mercator’s time may seem long ago. Yet there is a place where you can return to that time. To a time of trade, water, science and… religious unrest.
Welcome to Rupelmonde.
Passion, knowledge and craftsmanship
The Tower of the Counts is an imposing remnant of the former Counts’ Castle. Here, Mercator spent several months imprisoned on suspicion of Protestant sympathies. The Tidal Mill shows how Mercator’s contemporaries used water power to create prosperity. Both monuments make tangible the world in which Mercator lived and worked. A world that helped shape his thinking and making, his measuring and knowing.
Passion
Mercator wanted to map the world with precision. Not to amaze his contemporaries, but to give them direction and guidance. Making complex information usable for navigation and trade—that was his passion.
Knowledge
Mercator gathered information from maps, texts and his own measurements. He exchanged ideas with scholars and seafarers from the four corners of the world. The man from Rupelmonde brought order to the exponentially growing knowledge about the world.
Craftsmanship
Mercator translated that growing knowledge into maps, globes and projections that were far ahead of their time. So far ahead, in fact, that we still use his work today. Such as the Mercator projection.
The Mercator projection
On a globe—like the Earth—you cannot draw a straight line. That made it difficult for seafarers to plot their route. With the projection named after him, Mercator translated the globe into a flat map. That way, a captain could still set straight courses to plan and follow a route. That made long-distance travel more reliable. World trade flourished, as did the exchange of knowledge.
- Atlas
Mercator brought his maps together in a single collection. He named that collection: an atlas. With that, Gerardus referred to the legendary King Atlas of Mauretania, a wise philosopher, mathematician and astronomer. For the cartographer, the word “atlas” referred to the geographical and cosmological study of the world—and therefore to a scientific project. That approach reveals the thinker in Mercator: someone who not only gathers knowledge about the world, but also understands it and orders it thoughtfully. - Globes
With his globes, Mercator arranged his knowledge of the world in three dimensions. In his time, globes were a symbol of power. Whoever mapped the world displayed knowledge of that world—and therefore control. Mercator’s globes established his reputation as a leading cosmographer and secured him a permanent place in the gallery of great European scholars. - Mercator projection
The Mercator projection shows the globe on a flat map. That makes course-true navigation possible. The technique is used in ocean shipping and aviation. Online map services—such as Google Maps—build on Mercator’s projection.
Mercator lived in an era of Flemish ingenuity.
The era of scientists such as Vesalius, Ortelius, Dodoens and Lipsius. Science, craftsmanship and entrepreneurship joined forces.The printing presses of Christopher Plantin and Dirk Martens set new ideas in motion. They were spread via rivers, seas and oceans.
Mercator’s work was a crucial link in that story. His maps and ideas shaped not only how his contemporaries saw the world, but also how they used it.
Want to get to know Mercator even better? You can.
Museum
The MAP in Sint-Niklaas shows you how Mercator worked as a mapmaker and builder of measuring instruments. In this Museum aan het Park (Museum at the Park), you discover how the scholar turned his ideas into knowledge that was practically useful for his contemporaries.
In the 16th century, Rupelmonde was a crossroads of trade and knowledge. The rivers Scheldt and Rupel, the Tower of the Counts and the Tidal Mill show you the town as Mercator experienced it. Your guide in Mercator’s world? None other than Arnout Hauben.