Frederic Lucas

Frederic Augustus Lucas, Sc.D. (March 25, 1852 – February 9, 1929) was an American museum director.

Frederic A. Lucas was prominent in the Great American Museum movement, which sought to bring Natural Science to the American public. He eventually became Curator in Chief of the Brooklyn Museum, in Brooklyn, NY (1904), and subsequently enjoyed an appointment as director at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan (1911).

The son of a merchant seaman who was captain of a sailing vessel, he accompanied his father on two long voyages, the first (1861-1862) at the age of 9 and the second (1869-1870) when he was 17. He became fascinated with sea life, especially the marine birds, many of which he was able to snare, skin and prepare as mounted specimens. From this he developed an ambition to become a taxidermist and entered Ward's Natural Science Establishment at Rochester, NY to learn the techniques involved. Perhaps because of the manner of his development he seems to have had little regard for investigative science per se. As a consequence, he had little opportunity for formal education and he never sought any. After the 11 years he spent at Ward's he bragged that, "during those days he never read through any scientific book, never attended a course of scientific lectures, never did an hour's laboratory work, nor made a microscope slide", his interests being confined to avian osteology and the mounting and tagging of specimens for exhibition (Townsend 1930). His competency in this area was sufficient to provide him an appointment to mount and prepare avian specimens at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC (1882) at the age of 21 where he was given the title of Curator.

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