De L'Isle, Guillaume

The Delisle (de L'Isle) family followed the Sansons as a major influence in the development of French cartography at the very beginning of the eighteenth century at a moment when Dutch publishers were finally losing their control of the map trade. Like Nicolas Sanson, Claude Delisle was a geographer and historian and had four sons, all of whom made their mark in the life of the time, but Guillaume was the most remarkable member of the family. Said to have drawn his first map at the age of nine he was elected a member of the Academie Royale des Sciences by the time he was twenty-seven; later he was appointed to the highest honour as 'Premier Geographe du Roi'. His critical approach to the maps of his predecessors, backed by his training in mathematics and astronomy under J. D. Cassini, earned him early recognition as the 'first scientific cartographer' and the foremost geographer of his age. His maps were re-published long after his death in 1726.

Two of his brothers, Joseph Nicolas and Louis, spent many years in the service of Peter the Great in Russia where they organized a school of astronomy and carried out extensive surveys in areas hitherto hardly visited.

(Ref: Moreland and Bannister).