1512 - Born in the Flemish town of Rupelmonde on the 5th of March.
1552 - He lived in Duisburg.
1535-1536 - They worked together to construct a terrestrial globe, although the role of Mercator in the project was not primarily as a cartographer, but as a highly skilled engraver of brass plates.
1537 - Mercator's own independent map-making only began when he produced a map of Palestine.
1552 - He moved to Duisburg, one of the major cities in the German Duchy of Cleves.
1564 - He taught mathematics at the academic college of Duisburg. After producing several maps he was appointed Court Cosmographer to the Duke Wilhelm of Cleve.
1569 - He constructed a new chart and first used it had parallel lines of longitude to aid navigation by sea, as compass courses could be marked as straight lines.
1570 - He took the word atlas to describe a collection of maps, and encouraged Abraham Ortelius to compile the first modern world atlas, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum.
1578 - He produced his own atlas in a number of parts, the first of which was published and consisted of corrected versions of the maps of Ptolemy
Gerardus Mercator can confidently be called the greatest cartographer of the sixteenth century. His most famous contribution to science is a technique of rendering the globe on a flat surface, still...