Mercator: The man who mapped the planet by Nicholas Crane, Weidenfeld & Nicolson 拢20, ISBN 0297646656
IN 391 AD the library of Alexandria, the world鈥檚 greatest repository of knowledge at that time, was razed by Christian zealots in an act of intellectual vandalism perhaps unparalleled in history. For the next thousand years, the true geography of the Earth lay hidden beneath layers of dogma and myth which made Jerusalem the centre of the world and Asia the home of flesh-eating griffons.
Not until the 16th century did cartography begin to get back on track. It was propelled there by merchants who had hung on to fragments of Ptolemy鈥檚 maps, and the work of a new breed of cartographers who built upon the reports of explorers and advances in mathematics. Supreme among them was the Flemish polymath Gerhard Kremer, a man better known by the latinised version of his name, which appropriately enough means 鈥渕erchant鈥�: Gerardus Mercator.
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For someone whose name routinely appears on the most popular map of the world ever made, it is striking that the creator of Mercator鈥檚 Projection has never had a full biography in English. Nicholas Crane has rectified this in Mercator which tells the man鈥檚 story in impressive and engaging detail.
Born in Flanders (now part of Belgium) in 1512, Mercator suffered appalling privations as a child not least because of the social, religious and climatic upheaval then sweeping across Europe. Crane鈥檚 evocation of these turbulent times is especially memorable.
Orphaned and homeless at 18, Mercator reinvented himself, latinising his name and signing up at Louvain University. He initially thought he might become a philosopher, but quickly recognised that was no route to riches. Recognising the growing demand for maps, he signed up for mathematics courses, learned engraving and calligraphy and started out on the career that would make him world-famous.
Crane recounts Mercator鈥檚 career through his first globes to wall maps of various regions, and the technical problems he overcome to make them as convenient and reliable as possible. The toughest to crack was, of course, turning the 3D world into a 2D map. Even Ptolemy recognised that the transformation could not be achieved without distortion (though a formal proof only emerged over 200 years after Mercator鈥檚 death).
Ever mindful of practicalities, Mercator sought a projection that, while inevitably still causing distortion, would allow mariners to get from place to place simply by following their compass. It took him 20 years, but in 1569, Mercator unveiled the first world map based on his ingenious solution.
Yet as Crane shows, this was just part of the cartographic revolution Mercator began. For him, geography was about more than merely plotting towns and rivers: it was also a way of capturing the political realities of the world. Mercator created the concept of the atlas (a term he coined) for a collection of regional maps, and was the first to include magnetic bearings on globes.
Like Mercator鈥檚 maps, Crane鈥檚 biography is a fascinating guide, but it鈥檚 not without its faults. While the life and work of Mercator are dealt with in sometimes excessive detail, the historical background to Mercator鈥檚 achievements is meagre. His cartographic legacy is dealt with in an epilogue of risible brevity, considering that Mercator鈥檚 Projection remains the single most widely used in navigation, and has given rise to many variants, such as the Transverse Mercator, which minimises the notorious distortion of lands in high latitudes.
Crane is also clearly uncomfortable with mathematics 鈥� something of a handicap when writing about a man whose achievements owe so much to the subject. Even so, his account of the doyen of map-makers is guaranteed to bring a new appreciation of the genius behind this most famous map-maker of our planet.