Gerardus Mercator was a Flemish geographer, cosmographer and cartographer. He is most renowned for creating the 1569 world map based on a new projection which represented sailing courses of constant bearing as straight lines—an innovation that is still employed in nautical charts.
Portrait by the workshop of Titian, c. 1550
Rupelmonde from Flandria illustrata, 1641
The playwright and teacher Georgius Macropedius
Antoine Perrenot
A geographer is a physical scientist, social scientist or humanist whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society, including how society and nature interacts. The Greek prefix "geo" means "earth" and the Greek suffix, "graphy", meaning "description", so a geographer is someone who studies the earth. The word "geography" is a Middle French word that is believed to have been first used in 1540.
The Geographer (1668-69), by Johannes Vermeer
Gerardus Mercator