Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks KCB FRS FSA (20 March 1826 – 21 May 1897) was a British antiquarian and museum administrator.

"[1] Born at Geneva, he was elder son of Captain Frederick Franks, R.N., and of Frederica Anne, daughter of Sir John Saunders Sebright.

On leaving Cambridge in 1849 Franks devoted his energies to the Royal Archæological Institute, then newly established, and laid the foundations of his knowledge of ancient and medieval art, in arranging its collections for annual congresses.

[4] At the British Museum, and as director of the Society of Antiquaries of London, an appointment he received in 1858, he made himself the leading authority in England on medieval antiquities of all descriptions, upon porcelain, glass, artefacts of anthropological interest, and works of art later than the Classical period.

He became vice-president and ultimately president of the Society of Antiquaries; and in 1878 he declined the principal librarianship (then the title of the executive head of the British Museum).

[5] In 1855 Franks was responsible for acquiring for the museum the finest items from the collection of Ralph Bernal, the Liberal politician and collector, including the outstanding Lothair Crystal.

[7] In 1892 he succeeded in raising the £8,000 needed to buy the Royal Gold Cup; "to Franks this was his greatest acquisition, and the one of which he was most proud".

Though this activity was as an independent collector, it was of benefit also to the holdings of the British Museum, either in the short or longer term.

In a manuscript account of his life, which was discovered in 1983, Franks began, "Collecting is a hereditary disease, and I fear incurable.

[11] When the British Museum was considering buying the ceramics collection of Sir Andrew Fountaine and his heirs, which came onto the market in 1884,[12] Franks eased the deal by matching the money required with purchases of his own.

His major publications were: He also edited John Mitchell Kemble's Horæ Ferales (1863); and Edward Hawkins's Medallic Illustrations of British History, 1885.