Lazarus Fletcher
The Natural History Museum mineralogist whose clear introduction to meteorites taught the public for decades.
Key facts
- Born
- 1854
- Died
- 1921
- Nationality
- British
- Field
- Mineralogist and museum director
Lazarus Fletcher grew up in Salford, won a scholarship to Oxford, and in 1878 joined the mineral department of the British Museum. He became keeper of minerals in 1880 and, in 1909, director of the Natural History Museum in London.
Fletcher made the museum's meteorite collection one of the best in the world, and he described many meteorites himself, especially from Britain, Australia and South America. In 1881 he published An Introduction to the Study of Meteorites, a guide to the collection written for ordinary visitors. It explained what meteorites are, how they fall and what they contain, and it was revised and reprinted many times over the following decades.
He was also a careful crystallographer who measured and described the minerals of meteorites, but his greatest legacy was as an organiser and teacher.
Fletcher was knighted in 1916. The tradition he began, of writing clearly about meteorites for the public alongside detailed research, has continued at the museum ever since.