Jacques Devaulx

Gerhard Holzer studied history and geography at the University of Vienna and graduated with a thesis on the German-Austrian geologist Ferdinand von Hochstetter. Since 1989, he has been curator of the Woldan Collection at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna and has published a number of papers on scientific history, in particular on the history of discovery and cartography.Élisabeth Hébert is a mathematician and historian. She is the author of Instruments scientifiques à travers l’histoire (2004), a book about the usage of scientific, geometrical, and nautical instruments throughout the course of history; and Le Traité de Navigation de Jean-Baptiste Denoville (2008), an analysis and commentary of a reprint of Denoville’s nautical manuscript from 1760, which received a prize at the Nuit du Livre book awards in Paris, 2009. She is also President of the mathematical society Association Sciences en Seine et Patrimoine (ASSP) in Rouen and a retired Associate Professor of Mathematics at the IREM (Institut de Recherche sur l’Enseignement des Mathématiques) at the University of Rouen.Jean-Yves Sarazin (1967–2016) was a curator and historian. After completing advanced studies in history, paleographic archiving, and library conservation, he managed the Directory of French Cartographers at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, responsible for the conservation and restoration of cartographic documents. From 2010 he worked as director of the Department of Maps and Plans at the BnF. He also dedicated his academic career to the history of legal documents, and is the author of the Bibliographie d’histoire du notariat français, 1200-1815 (2004). He passed away on September 4th, 2016, following a lengthy illness.

“TASCHEN has published the work as a facsimile, embedded in a lavishly illustrated history of cosmography... as a reader, at some point you imagine that you are sufficiently prepared for your own sailing trip to America.”