John W. Hessler

John Hessler is currently Senior Cartographic Librarian in the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress. A Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society he is the recent recipient of a J. L Heiberg Research and Exploration Fellowship for his work on the physical remains of Roman Surveying and Centuriation in Southern France and North Africa. While at the Library of Congress, much of his research has concentrated on the use of computer modeling, especially radial basis functions and thin-plate splines, in the analysis of Roman, Medieval and Renaissance maps. The majority of this research is concerned with the problems of mathematically defining the geometric and structural properties of historic map projections and representations, and with the problem of georectification of historical maps. The author of a recently published translation of and commentary on Martin Waldseemuller's Cosmographiae Introductio (2008) entitled, 'The Naming of America', he is currently at work on a biography of the Renaissance astronomer Johannes Schoner called, A Globemaker's Toolbox: The Fragments, Annotations and Notebooks of Johannes Schoner.