This collection contains the papers of James Burleigh Lucas, a professor of chemistry at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University ("Virginia Tech") during the first half of the twentieth century. The collection consists of eleven notebooks containing Lucas' lecture and laboratory notes, most seeming to have been maintained by Lucas while attending summer graduate courses at the University of Illinois during the 1920s. The courses in which the notes were taken include both organic and inorganic chemistry, covering basic through advanced chemistry. A single notebook from Lucas' years at Virginia Tech is labeled "alkaloids, etc." and contains just a few pages of sources and miscellaneous notes.