Martin Behaim (October 6, 1459 - July 29, 1507) was a German textile merchant, traveler and cartographer. He was sufficiently convincing to have become an advisor to John II of Portugal on matters of navigation, and today he is best known for having produced, in 1492, the world's oldest surviving globe. He was born in Nuremberg to the elder Martin Behaim, also a merchant and a senator of the city, and Agnes Schopper. His education is not known, despite his own (unsupported) contention that he was a student of the mathematician and astronomer Regiomontanus. In 1474 at the age of fifteen he was sent to Flanders to apprentice as a textile merchant. Five years later, he moved to Antwerp to be closer to the center of that trade, also relying on Nuremberg contacts in that city to become established. In 1484, however, he made a move to Lisbon. His specific motives are unknown. But if he wished to benefit from the new trade opening to Africa in spices, slaves, and gold he could scarcely have made a better choice. He thrived, becoming a counselor in the court of King John II. It is supposed that he advised the court on navigation and astronomy, but we have no evidence that he had any such expertise to offer, or that he made any such contributions. It is deeply unlikely that he could have taught the Portuguese anything that they were not already expert in. The seventeenth-century historian Johann Christoph Wagenseil made the claim in 1682 that Behaim had discovered America before Columbus, and others suggested that he at least gave Columbus the idea of sailing west. These claims are not supported by evidence; as early as 1778 these claims were being vigorously refuted by the scholar Christoph Gottlieb von Murr. Claims that Behaim accompanied Diogo Cão on a voyage of discovery, and Pigafetta’s claim that Magellan had knowledge from Behaim of a strait to the Pacific are also suspect. It is more likely that he became a supplier of scientific and astronomic instruments, for which his hometown of Nuremberg was renowned. Whatever his contributions to the Portuguese court actually were, they were appreciated: on February 28, 1485 Behaim was knighted by John II. It is supposed that later that year he took part in a voyage to West Africa, probably on a trade voyage led by João Afonso de Aveiro. He married in Portugal in 1486, and settled on Portuguese island of Faial in the Azores, where his father-in-law, Josse van Huerter, was Captain-donatário and leader of the Flemish community. The necessity of settling a will brought him back to Nuremberg In 1490, where he would remain for three years. It is during this time that he encouraged the production of the globe – the ‘Erdapfel’ - for which he is now famous. 1493 saw his return to the Azores, where he would remain. An unfortunate business trip to Lisbon in 1507 found him in the hospice of Saint Bartholomew, where he died. More by this mapmaker...

Christoph Gottlieb von Murr (August 6, 1733 – April 8, 1811) was German polymath and scholar, living and working in Nuremberg. A historian and magistrate, he was prolific in print, appearing in many journals during his life. His writings extended to natural science, art history, and on the history of early libraries and books, both manuscripts and incunables. He was a vigorous correspondent and maintained a large library of his own. His early life is not known; he studied at was for the law, on its completion he instead began work as a historian. Many of his published works focused on the history of his native city, as well as its literature and art. Though himself a Protestant, he had become familiar with the Jesuits and wrote about the order and its 1773 suppression. He also reprinted, in 1790, Michael Servetus’ banned 1553 work Christianismi restitutio, burned when its author was condemned to the stake. He published in 1778 – and then continued to publish, in various journals and in several languages – a detailed refutation of the claims (initially floated by the 17th century historian Wagenseil) that Martin Behaim, and not Columbus and Vespucci, had been the first European discoverer of the Americas. It was in the service of this article, in its many translations, that von Murr produced what remains the first large-scale reproduction of part of the famous Behaim globe, and the only such available to today’s collector. Learn More...