He named the ‘atlas’ and shrank Africa: UN votes to phase out Mercator’s map

The United Nations voted on Friday (Sep 4) to adopt the ‘Correct the Map’ resolution, led and sponsored by Togo. With a positive response from 164 countries,Flemish geographer and cartographer Gerardus Mercator published a landmark map that will soon be phased out of offices, schools and the atlas, a word coined by him. Mercator in 1569 published the map that would fundamentally alter global navigation and forever change how humanity visualises planet Earth. Nearly five centuries later, his revolutionary grid system known as the Mercator projection remains the backbone of modern web mapping and maritime navigation.

About Mercator

Born Geert De Kremer in 1512 in Rupelmonde, County of Flanders, Mercator was a polymath who combined mathematical precision with artistic engraving. Beyond designing mathematical instruments and terrestrial globes, he was the first cartographer to coin the term ‘atlas’ to describe a bound collection of maps. However, his most enduring legacy grew out of a practical crisis facing 16th-century sea captains during the Age of Discovery.

Solving the Navigator's Dilemma

During the 1500s, transoceanic travel was perilous. Navigating a spherical Earth on a flat piece of paper created serious geometric errors. Ships attempting to sail long distances following straight lines drawn on traditional charts drifted dangerously off course, as straight lines did not align with constant compass directions.

Mercator solved this mathematical puzzle by projecting the spherical globe onto a seamless cylinder. By establishing a conformal grid where lines of latitude and longitude intersect at exact 90-degree right angles, he created a map where any straight line drawn between two points represents a constant compass heading, mathematically termed a rhumb line or loxodrome.

With this, the sailor could draw a straight line from Europe to the Americas, hold the compass at that fixed angle, and eventually reach their destination.

Distortion at the Poles

While Mercator's mathematical grid preserved shapes and local angles, it introduced severe spatial tradeoffs. To keep latitude and longitude lines as a uniform grid, the distance between parallels had to expand exponentially as map coordinates moved away from the Equator toward the North and South Poles.

This design creates drastic area distortion. On a standard Mercator chart, Greenland appears roughly equal in size to the entire continent of Africa. In reality, Africa is roughly 14 times larger. High-latitude regions, including North America, Europe, Russia, and Antarctica, appear disproportionately massive compared to equatorial landmasses like South America, Central Africa, and India.