# Fame.am profile — machine-readable export
# Canonical URL: https://fame.am/person/gerardus-mercator
# Generated: 2026-08-31T14:57:14.582Z

schema: https://schema.org/Person
url: "https://fame.am/person/gerardus-mercator"
name: "Gerardus Mercator"
slug: "gerardus-mercator"
description: "He made the sea legible. Mercator's 1569 projection turned every ocean route into a straight line on paper—a trick of geometry that navigators still rely on, even though it warps the poles into oblivion."
tagline: "Flemish geographer, cosmographer and cartographer (1512–1594)"
image: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/Gerard_Mercator_(Cremer)._Line_engraving_by_N._de_Larmessin%2C_Wellcome_V0003979.jpg?width=1200"
gender: "male"
category:
  name: "Academics"
  slug: "academics"
profileType:
  name: "Academic"
  slug: "academic"
  entityType: "https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q39631"
birthDate: "1512-03-05"
deathDate: "1594-12-02"
livingStatus: "DECEASED"
scores:
  popularity:           62.78
  momentum:             16.05320899616018
  historical:           24.673632
  currentAttention:     7.118603557714914
  sourceConfidence:     60
  profileCompleteness:  60
  trendDirection:       "RISING"
ranks:
  global:   null
  country:  null
  category: null
tags:
  - name: "Business Professionals"
    slug: "business-professionals"
  - name: "Academic"
    slug: "academic"
  - name: "Mathematics"
    slug: "mathematics"
  - name: "Philosophy"
    slug: "philosophy"
  - name: "News Broadcasting"
    slug: "news-broadcasting"
  - name: "Literature"
    slug: "literature"
  - name: "Early Modern Era"
    slug: "early-modern-era"
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    title: "Gerardus Mercator"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://az.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Merkator"
    title: "Gerard Merkator"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Герард Мэркатар"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Gerardus Mercator"
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    title: "Gerhard Mercator"
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    title: "Gerardus Mercator"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Gerardus Mercator"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://eu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerardus_Mercator"
    title: "Gerardus Mercator"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Wikiquote"
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    title: "Wikiquote"
    type:  "WEBSITE"
  - url: "https://www.discogs.com/artist/2904309"
    title: "Discogs"
    type:  "DATABASE"
  - url: "https://et.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerardus_Mercator"
    title: "Gerardus Mercator"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"

# bio (long form, separated for readability)
bio: |
  Born into a Catholic family in Flanders in 1512, Mercator built his reputation as a maker of globes and scientific instruments, selling them across Europe for six decades. He rarely traveled; his geography came from a library of over a thousand books and correspondence in six languages with merchants, seamen, and scholars. In 1569 he published the world map that bore his name—a projection representing sailing courses of constant bearing as straight lines, revolutionizing navigation. Accused of heresy by Catholic authorities, he spent six months in prison before his release, then left Leuven for the more tolerant Duisburg, where he spent his final thirty years. There he produced over a hundred new regional maps and assembled them into his 1595 Atlas—the first use of that word for a book of maps, named for the Titan he considered the first great geographer. He died in Duisburg in 1594, leaving behind not just charts but chronologies, theological writings, and a method for flattening the globe that cartographers never abandoned.