Martin Waldseemüller, World Map (1507)

Martin Waldseemüller (c. 1445-c. 1521) was a  scholar, cleric and cartographer born near Freiburg, in what is now Germany. His 1507 map of the world is known as "America's birth certificate" because it is the first to depict and name America as a separate continent in the western hemisphere. The map grew out of an ambitious project in  France to document and update geographic knowledge derived from the Portuguese and Spanish explorations. Waldseemüller's map was heavily influenced by the 1501-02 voyages of  Amerigo Vespucci to the New World. Vespucci refuted Columbus's belief that the lands newly discovered by Europeans were part of Asia, arguing instead that a new continent had been discovered.  To create the map, Waldseemüller and his team used the classic geopgraphy of Ptolemy, who is depicted at the maps' top left and whose influence is further evidenced by the bulbous shape of the map, reminiscent of Ptolemy's second map projection.  The map represents a huge leap forward in Europeans' knowledge of the world , which they had previously viewed as made up of only Africa, Asia, and Europe. Interestingly, Waldseemüller never used the name "America" again  on any of his subsequent maps, suggesting that he was not fully convinced that a new continent had been discovered.