Louis Pope Gratacap

Louis Pope Gratacap (pen name L. P. Gratacap) was born on November 1, 1851 in Brooklyn to John L. and Lucinda Gratacap and died December 23, 1917 (aged 66). He lived for most of his life in West New Brighton, Staten Island.

Biography In 1876 Gratacap began work as an assistant at the American Museum of Natural History. In 1881 he became Curator of Mineralology, and in 1900 he was appointed as Curator of Mollusca. He went on several expeditions, including one to Iceland in 1906. He joined the Natural Science Association of Staten Island in 1881, and became its president in 1887. He held these positions until the time of his death 1917, nearly four decades later.

A scientist with several molluscs bearing his genitive name, Gratacap was known as an outstanding lecturer, and wrote a popular science guide to local minerals and a textbook on the geology of New York City and great New York. A polymath, he branched out into speculative fiction and early science fiction featuring the likes of climate change, eugenics, the lost world, the ever-popular planet Mars, and even zombies of a sort, as well as lay philosophy and theology as such.

His immensely didactic oeuvre is little known or read today, and his treatises on philosophy and theology as such are of only historic interest.