Lewis Caleb Beck (4 October 1798 Schenectady – 20 April 1853 Albany, New York) was an American physician, botanist, chemist, and mineralogist.
[1] He graduated from Union College in 1815 with a Master of Arts.
Beck was the author of a number of books and papers on botany and chemistry, and also of an elaborate report on the mineralogy of New York, based upon his researches as mineralogist (appointed 1836) of the New York Geological Survey of 1835–1841, which was published as one of the volumes of the Natural History of the State of New York (1842).
Other works included A Gazetteer of Illinois and Missouri (1823), An Account of the Salt Springs at Salina (1826), A Manual of Chemistry (1831), On Adulterations (New York, 1846), and Botany of the United States North of Virginia (1848).
His brother Theodric Romeyn Beck authored the first significant American book on forensic medicine, to which another brother, John Brodhead Beck, also contributed.