Claim: Amerigo Vespucci was a geographer.

A geographer is a scholar whose area of study is geography , the study of Earth 's natural environment and human society .   Although geographers are historically known as people who make maps , map making is actually the field of study of cartography , a subset of geography . Geographers do not study only the details of the natural environment or human society , but they also study the reciprocal relationship between these two . For example , they study how the natural environment contributes to the human society and how the human society affects the natural environment .   In particular , physical geographers study the natural environment while human geographers study human society . Modern geographers are the primary practitioners of the GIS -LRB- geographic information system -RRB- , who are often employed by local , state , and federal government agencies as well as in the private sector by environmental and engineering firms .   There is a well-known painting by Johannes Vermeer titled The Geographer , which is often linked to Vermeer 's The Astronomer . These paintings are both thought to represent the growing influence and rise in prominence of scientific enquiry in Europe at the time of their painting , 1668 -- 69 .