Martin Waldseemüller
German cartographer
Martin Waldseemüller (c. 1470 – 16 March 1520) was a German cartographer and humanist scholar. Sometimes known by the Hellenized 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. The same map was the first to show the Americas as a distinct landmass clearly separated from Asia by the Pacific Ocean. Waldseemüller was also 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.
Life and works
Details of Waldseemüller's life are scarce. He was born around 1470 in the German town of Wolfenweiler. His father was a butcher and moved to Freiburg (now Freiburg im Breisgau) in about 1480. Records show that Waldseemüller was enrolled in 1490 at the University of Freiburg, where Gregor Reisch, a noted humanist scholar, was one of his influential teachers; the printer Johannes Schott was his classmate.
“Martin Waldseemüller” enters the record as german cartographer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Martin, Waldseemüller and German can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q57197. VIAF identifies the subject as 27366067. The Library of Congress control number is n90601547. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1470, 1520, 1507 and 1513.
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This entry incorporates text from “Martin Waldseemüller” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.