Martin Waldseemüller
Martin Waldseemüller ( – 16 March 1520) was a German
cartographer and
humanist scholar. Sometimes known by the
Latinized form of his name,
Hylacomylus, his work was influential among contemporary cartographers. His collaborator
Matthias Ringmann and he are credited with the first recorded usage of the word ''
America'' to name a portion of the
New World in honour of Italian explorer
Amerigo Vespucci in a world map they delineated in 1507. Waldseemüller was also the first to map South America as a continent separate from Asia, the first to produce a printed globe, and the first to create a printed wall map of Europe. A set of his maps printed as an appendix to the 1513 edition of
Ptolemy's
''Geography'' is considered to be the first example of a modern
atlas.
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