| Martin Behaim |
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| german cartographers | |
| behaim, martin | |
| 1459 births | |
| 1507 deaths | |
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Martin Behaim ( October 6 , 1459 – July 29 , 1507 ), or ''Behem'', was a Navigator and Geographer of great pretensions. Behaim was born at he was knighted by King John, who afterwards employed him in various capacities; but, from the time of his marriage in 1486, he usually resided at Fayal in the Azores , where his father-in-law, Jobst Van Huerter , was governor of a Flemish colony. On a visit to his native city in 1492, he constructed his famous terrestrial Globe , still preserved at the Nuremberg National Museum, on the same floor as Albrecht Dürer's galleries. (Nuremberg was the heart of the German Renaissance.) The influence of Ptolemy is strongly apparent, but every attempt is made to incorporate the discoveries of the later Middle Ages ( Marco Polo , etc.). The antiquity of this globe and the year of its execution, on the eve of the discovery of Americas , make it not just the oldest but the most historically valuable globe extant. It corresponds well with Columbus 's notion of the Earth; he and Behaim drew their information from the same sources. All globes are virtual worlds, but this antique provides a glimpse inside the European world on the eve of unparalleled change. Its surface is covered with legends and paintings, and the ''Erdapfel'' or Earthapple, as Behaim named it, could be described as a turning encyclopedia. (The state-funded Digital Globe Project has made it available as software for scholars and the interested layperson.) Though less navigationally accurate than the beautiful Catalonian '' Portolani '' charts of the 14th century, as a scientific work it is of enormous importance. Its West Africa is marvellously incorrect; the and he were apparently in Portugal at the same time, no connection between the two has been established. He died at Lisbon in 1507. His family rescued the globe from city hall before it went the way of so many out-of-date artifacts. REFERENCES
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