Lucas was educated at the École Normale Supérieure. He worked in the Paris observatory and later became a professor of mathematics in Paris. In the meantime he served in the army. Lucas posed a challenge to prove that the only solution of the Diophantine equation: with N > 1 is when N=24 and M=70. It was not until 1918 that a proof (using hyperelliptic functions) was found for this remarkable fact, which has relevance to the bosonic string theory in 26-dimensions [1]. He worked on the development of the umbral calculus.