Eduard Lucas

Eduard Lucas (1816 to 1882) was a German pomologist, born in Erfurt. He worked at the botanical gardens in Munich from 1838 and Regensburg from 1841, taught at the Agricultural and Forestry Institute in Hohenheim from 1843, and around 1860 founded the Pomological Institute in Reutlingen. With Johann Georg Conrad Oberdieck he edited the Monatsschrift für Pomologie und praktischen Obstbau from 1855 to 1864, a journal that continued under later titles, and with Oberdieck and Friedrich Jahn he edited the eight-volume Illustrirtes Handbuch der Obstkunde, published from 1859 to 1875. He is credited with improving and expanding the fruit classification system developed earlier by Adrian Diel. Several fruit varieties bear his name, and the Eduard-Lucas-Medaille, awarded by the Verein zur Erhaltung und Förderung alter Obstsorten, is named for him.