The Dutch cartographer and geographer Gerardus Mercator, 1512-1594. Mercator was educated at the University of Louvain, Belgium, where in 1534 he founded a centre for the study of geography. In 1552, due to religious persecution, he moved to Duisberg, Germany. Here in 1569 he developed a map of the world using a new kind of projection which now bears his name, the Mercator projection. In his projection meridians of longitude were made parallel instead of converging at the poles. This allowed navigators to plot their course as a straight line of constant heading, corresponding to a great circle on the globe. He is considered the founder of modern geography and cartography.