Lucas' early childhood was spent in Cornwall, and when he was around nine years of age a move was made to Stow on the Wold in Gloucestershire.
He graduated with a fourth class honours degree in 1874, following pneumonia before his final examination, but he later won the Burdett-Coutts geological scholarship in 1876.
[2] He became a master at The Leys School, Cambridge in order to provide for his brother's three young children who remained in the UK.
Lucas had previously won the gold medal at an examination for botany held by the Apothecaries Society, open to all medical students of the London schools.
Lucas played in the football team, until he broke his collar-bone, and founded a natural history society of which the whole school became members.
The museum grew in after years, and gained a reputation at Cambridge when one of the boys made interesting finds in the pleistocene beds of the Cam valley.
[3] Later on he was appointed mathematical and science master at the same school, arrived in Melbourne at the end of January 1883, and immediately began his work.
It was initially stored at the CSIRO offices in Canberra and then moved for easier access by researchers to the National Herbarium of New South Wales.
[2] He developed pneumonia after collecting seaweed from rockpools at Warrnambool, Victoria in May 1936, and during the journey to his home collapsed on the train at Albury, New South Wales.