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Gerardus Mercator (March 5, 1512 – December 2, 1594) was a Flemish cartographer. He was born in Rupelmonde in East Flanders to parents from Gangelt in the Duchy of Jülich. Born Gheert Cremer, "Mercator" is the Latinized form of his name meaning "merchant". He is remembered for the Mercator chart named after him.

Despite his fame as a cartographer, Mercator's main source of income came through his craftmanship of mathematical instruments. Mercator's own independent map-making only began when he produced a map of Palestine in 1537. Mercator devised a technique to produce globes, celestial as well as terrestrial, by techniques of relative mass production. Twenty-two such pairs of Mercator globes have survived.