[1] Lucas served as an artillery officer in the French Army during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871.

It was not until 1918 that a proof (using elliptic functions) was found for this remarkable fact, which has relevance to the bosonic string theory in 26 dimensions.

[7] He also invented the Tower of Hanoi puzzle in 1883, which he marketed under the nickname N. Claus de Siam, an anagram of Lucas d'Amiens, and published for the first time a description of the dots and boxes game in 1889.

At the banquet of the annual congress of the Association française pour l'avancement des sciences, a waiter dropped some crockery and a piece of broken plate cut Lucas on the cheek.

He died a few days later of a severe skin inflammation, probably caused by sepsis, at 49 years old.