Nicolosi globular projection

The Nicolosi globular projection is a polyconic map projection invented about the year 1000 by the Muslim Persian polymath al-Biruni. As a circular representation of a hemisphere, it is called globular because it evokes a globe. It can only display one hemisphere at a time and so normally appears as a "double hemispheric" presentation in world maps. The projection came into use in the Western world starting in 1660, reaching its most common use in the 19th century. As a "compromise" projection, it preserves no particular properties, instead giving a balance of distortions.

History

Abū Rayḥān Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad Al-Bīrūnī, who was the foremost Muslim scholar of the Islamic Golden Age, invented the first recorded globular projection for use in celestial maps about the year 1000. Centuries later, as Europe entered its Age of Discovery, the demand for world maps increased rapidly, sparking a vast experimentation with diverse map projections. Globular projections were one category that received early attention, with inventions by Roger Bacon in the 13th century, Petrus Apianus in the 16th century, and also in the 16th century by French Jesuit priest Georges Fournier. In 1660, Giovanni Battista Nicolosi, a Sicilian chaplain in Rome, reinvented Al-Biruni's projection as a modification of Fournier's first projection. It is unlikely Nicolosi knew of al-Biruni's work, and Nicolosi's name is the one usually associated with the projection.