Gene Keyes

American cartographer, peace researcher, and map historian (b. 1941), creator of the Cahill-Keyes world map projection.

Gene Keyes is an American cartographer and independent scholar best known for the Cahill-Keyes projection, an octahedral "butterfly" world map he developed beginning in the mid-1970s as a refinement of Bernard J. S. Cahill's 1909 Butterfly Map. A longtime peace activist and researcher, Keyes has published extensive online essays on the history and comparative merits of whole-earth map projections, positioning the symmetrical, low-distortion Cahill-Keyes design as an alternative to other equal-area and geodesic-derived world maps.

Relationship to Fuller

Relationship: chronicler. Keyes is a persistent documentarian and critic of R. Buckminster Fuller's cartographic and geometric work. Much of his published writing engages directly with Fuller's Dymaxion Map (the Dymaxion Airocean World map), which unfolds the globe onto an icosahedron; Keyes catalogs its distortions and design history in detail while arguing that the Cahill-derived octahedral approach yields a more faithful, symmetrical result. In doing so he also examines Fuller's underlying geodesic mathematics and the drafting lineage behind the map — work associated with Fuller's partner Shoji Sadao — making Keyes one of the more thorough outside chroniclers and challengers of the Fuller map tradition.

See Also

• R. Buckminster Fuller (R. Buckminster Fuller) — the central figure
• Shoji Sadao (Shoji Sadao) — cartographer who drew the definitive Dymaxion Map versions Keyes critiques
• The Dymaxion World of Buckminster Fuller (The Dymaxion World of Buckminster Fuller) — survey documenting the Dymaxion map and geometry at the heart of Keyes's critique

Sources

• Compiled from general knowledge and corpus mentions; no single work in this corpus anchors this figure.