Willem Janszoon Blaeu

Cartographer and publisher
Willem Janszoon Blaeu was a Dutch cartographer, globe maker and publisher. He was born at Uitgeest or Alkmaar, to a well-to-do herring salesman. His father expected him to continue the family business, but his interests lay more in mathematics and astronomy. Blaeu become a pupil of the great Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, and lived for two years on the Island of Hven, over the winter of 1595/1596 at Brahe's observatory in Urienborg. In 1599 he founded a business as globe maker in Amsterdam, and soon expanded the business to include map, chart and book publishing.

At the beginning of his career, Amsterdam was becoming one of the wealthiest trading cities in Europe, the base of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and a centre of banking and the diamond trade. In a city that owned its prosperity to maritime trade, reliable maps for navigation were not only in need by numerous merchants, sailors, and adventurers, but it also turned out that many well-to-do citizens were curious for the world behind the horizon and were prepared to spend lots of money on luxuriously designed atlases and beautiful earth globes and celestial globes. In fact, Blaeu was appointed map-maker of the VOC in 1633.

His most famous work was the Atlas Novus or Theatrum Orbis Terrarum sive Atlas Novus of 1635, which was published until 1655 in total six volumes. It was published in German, Latin, Dutch, and French. After his death his business was continued by his sons Joan and Cornelis, who started an even larger work based on Atlas Novus, the Atlas Maior, which reached 12 volumes and was the most expensive book of the 17th century.