Hubbard, Lucius L. (1849-1933 )

Lucius Lee Hubbard was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on August 7, 1849, the son of Annie Elizabeth Lee and Lucius Virgilius Hubbard, an 1824 Harvard graduate. He graduated from Harvard in 1872, received his law degree from Boston University Law School in 1875, and married Francis L. Lambard that same year. From then until 1883 he lived in Cambridge and maintained his law office in Boston. Ultimately Lucius and Francis had six children, only three of which survived to 1900.

Hubbard was a life-long mineral collector, and he also took time off to study mineralogy at the Universities of Heidelberg and Bonn beginning in 1883. After receiving his PhD in Bonn in 1886 he joined the staff of the Michigan Geological Survey and the Michigan College of Mines in 1890. In 1893 he left to become Michigan State Geologist, a post he held until 1899, when he resigned to head geological exploration activities for the Copper Range Company. He discovered the southern extension of the Baltic lode, the last big native copper deposit to be found in the district; it became the Champion mine, where Hubbard later became general manager. He served as a member of the Board of Control of the Michigan College of Mines, and as a Regent of the University of Michigan, from 1910 until his death in Eagle Harbor, Michigan on August 3, 1933.

Despite being partially color-blind, Hubbard built an immense, first-class personal mineral collection, which he donated to the Michigan College of Mines (today Michigan Technological University). It consisted of high-quality specimens from the Michigan Copper Country and Europe. A suite of his calcite crystals was described and figured by Charles Palache in his classic 1898 paper on Lake Superior Region calcites.