The
explorer and
cartographer Amerigo Vespucci (
March 9,
1454 -
February 22,
1512) was the first person to demonstrate that the
New World discovered by
Christopher Columbus in 1492 was not the eastern appendage of
Asia, but rather a previously-unknown "fourth"
continent.
[a] The continents of
North and
South America (and, by extension, the
United States of America) derive their name from the
feminized Latin version of his
first name (see
Naming of America).
[1]Vespucci played a senior role in two voyages which explored the east coast of South America between 1499 to 1502. On the first of these voyages he discovered that South America extended much further (the Indies). Vespucci's voyages became widely known in Europe after two accounts attributed to him were published between 1502 and 1504. In 1507, Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the new continent America after Vespucci's first name, Amerigo. In an accompanying book, Waldseemüller published one of the Vespucci accounts, which led to criticism that Vespucci was trying to usurp Christopher Columbus' glory[citation needed]. However, the rediscovery in the 18th century of other letters by Vespucci, primarily the Soderini Letter, has led to the view that the early published accounts were fabrications, not by Vespucci, but by others.
Amerigo Vespucci was born in 1454 in Florence, Italy. Amerigo Vespucci worked for Lorenzo de' Medici and his brother, Giovanni. In 1492 they sent him to work at their agency in Seville, Spain.
In 1508, after only two voyages to the Americas, the position of chief of navigation of Spain (piloto mayor de Indias) was created for Vespucci, with the responsibility of planning navigation for ocean voyages. He died of malaria on February 22, 1512 in Seville, Spain.
