Frederick Wilfrid Lancaster

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Frederick Wilfrid ("Wilf") Lancaster (September 4, 1933 – August 25, 2013) was a British-American information scientist. He immigrated to the US in 1959 and worked as information specialist for the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland, from 1965 to 1968. He was a professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana, from 1972 to 1992 and professor emeritus from 1992 to 2013. He continued as an honored scholar after retirement speaking on the evolution of librarianship in the 20th and 21st century.

Lancaster made notable achievements with early online retrieval systems, including evaluation studies of MEDLARS. He published broadly in library and information science over a period of four decades and continuously emerged as a visionary leader in the field, where research, writing, and teaching earned him the highest honors in the profession. Lancaster excelled at many fronts: as scholar, educator, mentor, and writer.