Martin Behaim (October 6, 1459 – July 29, 1507), or Behem, was a navigator and geographer of great pretensions.
Behaim was born at Nuremberg, according to one tradition,
about 1436; according to Ghiilany, as late as 1459. He was drawn to
Portugal by participation in Flanders trade, and acquired a scientific
reputation at the court of John II. As a pupil, real or supposed, of the
astronomer Regiomontanus (i.e. Johann Müller of Königsberg in Franconia)
he became (c. 1480) a member of a council appointed by King John for the
furtherance of navigation. His alleged introduction of the cross-staff
into Portugal (an invention described by the Spanish Jew, Levi ben
Gerson, in the ~4th century) is a matter of controversy; his
improvements in the astrolabe were perhaps limited to the introduction
of handy brass instruments in place of cumbrous wooden ones; it seems
likely that he helped to prepare better navigation tables than had yet
been known in the Peninsula. In 1484-1485 he claimed to have accompanied
Diogo Cão in his second expedition to West Africa, really undertaken in
1485-86, reaching Cabo Negro in 15°40 S. and Cabo Ledo still farther
on. It is now disputed whether Behaims pretensions here deserve any
belief; and it is suggested that instead of sharing in this great voyage
of discovery, the Nuremberger only sailed to the nearer coasts of
Guinea, perhaps as far as the Bight of Benin, and possibly with José
Visinho the [...]
