Amerigo Vespucci
Amerigo Vespucci gave his name to two continents on the strength of letters whose authorship is disputed. Born in Florence in 1454 into a well-connected family, he was educated by an uncle who was a Dominican humanist, and worked for the Medici bank, which sent him to Seville in 1492 to manage its commercial agency. There he outfitted ships, and became involved in provisioning Columbus's later voyages. He sailed to the New World between 1499 and 1502, on at least two voyages and possibly four — one under Spanish and one under Portuguese command — reaching the mouth of the Amazon, the Brazilian coast and far to the south. He was a competent navigator who worked on longitude by lunar distances, and named the Bay of All Saints and Venezuela. The claim to his name rests on the Mundus Novus letter of 1503 and the Soderini letter of 1504-05, printed in enormous numbers across Europe. They argued something Columbus never accepted: that these lands were not the eastern edge of Asia but a previously unknown fourth part of the world. The southern coastline ran far beyond anything Ptolemy described, which was the decisive evidence. Both letters exist in versions that were embellished by printers, and how much of them Vespucci wrote is still argued. In 1507 the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller published a world map applying the feminised form America to the new land, on the reasoning that the other continents carried women's names. Vespucci became piloto mayor of Spain in 1508, examining and licensing navigators. He died in Seville in 1512.
- Lived: 1454 CE – 1512 CE
- Nationality: Florentine
- Roles: navigator, explorer, cartographer
