Abraham Ortelius
Flemish cartographer, geographer and cosmographer (1527-1598) · Scientists · Died at 71
Abraham Ortelius is read about 185 times a day, in 63 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 15 September 2026
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Something wrong?He bound the known world between covers - the first modern atlas, published in 1570, that turned geography from loose-leaf guesswork into a bound, sellable fact. Centuries before plate tectonics, he also proposed the continents had once been joined.
Also in Deutsch
Photos 8
Abraham Ortelius by Peter Paul Rubens
Joris Hoefnagel - Allegory for Abraham Ortelius
1603 Ortelius View of The Paradise of Tempe at the foot of Mount Olympus
Abraham Ortelius - Het keizerrijk Ethiopië - Museum Hof van Busleyden Mechelen 6-07-2018 12-36-43
Abraham Ortelius - Puteoli and Baiae
Abraham Ortelius - Solfatara
Africae propriae tabula, in qua Punica regna uides, Tyrios et Agenoris urbem ; Sinus Carthaginensis - ex conatibus geographicis Abrahami Ortelii - btv1b59641019.jpg?width=1200)
Angliae, Scotiae, Et Hiberniae, Sive Britannicar- Insularum Descriptio (cropped)About this person
Abraham Ortelius was born in Antwerp on 4 or 14 April 1527, in what was then the Spanish Netherlands. Trained as a cartographer and cosmographer, he became a central figure in the Netherlandish school of cartography alongside Gemma Frisius and Gerardus Mercator. In 1570 he published the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the first modern atlas - a collection that marked the official start of the Golden Age of Netherlandish cartography and made him an important geographer during Spain's age of discovery. Beyond compiling maps, he advanced a radical idea: that the continents had once been connected and had since drifted apart. He died in Antwerp on 28 June 1598.
Scientists born in the 1520s 6
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