FRANKS, SIR AUGUSTUS WOLLASTON (1826 1897), English antiquary, was born on March 20, 1826, and was educated at Eton and at Trinity college, Cambridge. In 1851 he was appointed assistant in the antiquities department of the British Museum. Here, and as director of the Society of Anti quaries, an appointment he received in 1858, he made himself the first authority in England upon mediaeval antiquities of all de scriptions, upon porcelain, glass, the manufactures of savage nations, and in general upon all Oriental curiosities and works of art later than the Classical period. In 1866 the British and mediaeval antiquities, with the ethnographical collections, were formed into a distinct department under his superintendence ; and the Christy collection of ethnography in Victoria street, London, afterwards transferred to the British Museum was also under his care. He retired in 1896, and died on May 21, 1897. His fortune was largely devoted to the collection of ceramics and precious objects of mediaeval art, most of which became the property of the nation, either by donation in his lifetime or by bequest at his death. The most famous of the objects bequeathed by him to the British Museum is the carved bone casket, Northumbrian work of the 8th century, known as the "Franks Casket."