Heinrich Berghaus was his uncle; they worked closely together as colleagues, making many significant contributions and improvements to cartography. Heinrich Berghaus’s ‘Physical Atlas’, which Hermann collaborated on and re-editioned following his uncle’s death, exhaustively summarised all known physical facts about the world at the time, focusing on geology, vulcanology, meteorology, hydrography, botany and communications, among other things. Their world atlas of diseases was also a seminal publication, a landmark in medical cartography. Hermann’s 5-pointed star projection of the world was widely adopted.