Lazarus Fletcher

Sir Lazarus Fletcher ( born March 9, 1854 in Salford, † January 6, 1921 in Grange- over-Sands ) was a British mineralogist and crystallographer.

Fletcher came from humble beginnings and excelled even as a schoolboy at the Manchester Grammar School and then as a student at Balliol College, Oxford University, where he studied mathematics and physics, among others. From 1875 he was demonstrator in physics at the Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford, and Lecturer in 1877. Through the study of Groth 's Textbook of Crystallography he turned to Mineralogy and in 1878 assistant to the Mineralogical Collection ( then still under Maskelyne ) of the British Museum, which moved to its present location at the Natural History Museum in South Kensington under Fletchers line 1881. From 1880 to 1919 he was Chief Curator of the Mineralogical Collection. 1909 to 1919 he was director of the Natural History Museum.

In 1889 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society, in 1916 he was knighted and in 1912 he received the Wollaston medal. 1885 to 1889 he was President and then Secretary General of the Mineralogical Society. 1910 to 1912 he was Vice President of the Royal Society, 1890-1892 Vice- President of the Geological Society of London, and from 1895 to 1897 Vice- President of the Physical Society.

On the occasion of the tercentenary of the King James Bible 1911 he contributed a section Biblical minerals in the exhibition catalog of the Natural History Museum.

He was an honorary doctorate from the University of Berlin and the University of St. Andrews, a member of the Bavarian and the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and the New York Academy of Sciences.

He was married twice and had a daughter. Most recently, he lived in Ravenstonedale, where he is buried.

Writings

  • Guide to the study of meteorites, 1881 (Natural History Museum )
  • Guide to the study of minerals, 1884 (Natural History Museum )
  • Introduction to the study of rocks, 1895 (Natural History Museum )
  • The optical indicatrix and the transmission of light in crystals, 1891
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