Lester Frank Ward was born on June 18, 1841, in Joliet, Illinois.

He was a botanist, paleontologist, and sociologist. His family did not have enough money to send him to school, so he was home-schooled and self-educated in his youth. He taught himself Latin, Greek, German, Russian, Japanese, and Hebrew. After his family moved to Myersburg, Pennsylvania, Ward started working with his brother in a wagon wheel shop. At the same time, he continued studying after work and at night. It was this experience of poverty and hard work that affected Ward and he later dedicated his academic life to advocating for social justice. His vision of a just society, with equality for women, all social classes and races, and the elimination of poverty was revolutionary for his time. Ward enlisted in the Union Army and was sent to the Civil War front, where he was wounded three times. After the war, he graduated from Columbian College, now the George Washington University (B.A., 1869; LL.B., 1871; M.A., 1872). He never practiced law and worked as a federal government scientist and researcher. In 1883, he was made Geologist of the U.S. Geological Survey and in 1892, Paleontologist, a position he held until 1906, when he accepted the Chair of Sociology at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. Ward became the first president of the American Sociological Association in 1906. He also served as editor of the American Journal of Sociology.

In 1862, he married Elizabeth Carolyne Bought (1835-1872), and in 1873, he remarried Rosamond Asenath Pierce (1840–1913). He died on April 18, 1913, in Washington, D.C.