supported financially – although in an insufficient measure – the publication of his works and especially of the 'Atlas', which was beset with many financial problems, and which he, at the end of his life, considered to be far from accomplished. Also his 'Essai' has remained a 'torso': of the six volumes he planned to compile only three were actually published, extending only to the 15th century. This is all the more regretable as a number of the maps and charts in it, which he intended to discuss in the remaining volumes, now figure in the 'Atlas' without any commentary. Santarém himself had reported in 1855 that Volume IV was 'all written and ready for the printer'. After his death in early 1856, the Secretary of the Real Academia de Ciências was in 1857 entrusted with the task of seeing Vol. IV through the press and preparing the manuscripts of the remaining volumes for publication, but 'although the man was well-paid during three years for the work expected from him, nothing was published and, still worse, Santarém's original text went astray and could never be found again'. Santarém's best and most detailed biographer is undoubtedly Jordão A. de Freitas whose book, however, is written in Portuguese and therefore rather difficult to access . The same disadvantage applies to the chapter devoted to Santarém by Armando Cortesão in his work on Portuguese cartographers and cartography. In the latter's 'History of Portuguese Cartography written in English, however, an excellent account is given of Santarem's life and work. The short biographical note given here is largely based on this text. In 1985 a facsimile edition of the third and last edition (1849) of his 'Atlas' was published by Rudolf Muller, bookseller and publisher in Amsterdam. There is now, available in English, a biographical and bibliographical text about Visconde de Santarém in Dicionário de Historiadores Portugueses (Dictionary of Portuguese Historians), written by Daniel Estudante Protásio, a Portuguese researcher who has studied the life and works of Santarém since 1994. Other texts written by Protásio in Portuguese can also be downloaded at his personal page at Academia.edu. References 1841 books Atlases