View source for Michael F. Lynch

'''Michael F. Lynch''' (1932-2024) pioneered computer-based chemical information studies.


== Life ==
'''Michael ("Mike") Felix Lynch''' was born in 1932, He earned BSc and PhD degrees in chemistry at University College, Dublin, then carried out post-doctoral research at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, working with Nobel Prize winner Valdimir Prelog. He moved to the USA in 1961 to work for [[Chemical Abstracts Service]] (CAS), where he became head of Basic Research Department. 

He returned to the UK and was awarded a research grant by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (later of the British Library) in 1965, to conduct studies of the automatic indexing of textual documents. He joined Sheffield’s Postgraduate School of Librarianship (later named Information School) to conduct this research and soon became a member of the permanent academic staff. He was then awarded a Personal Chair in 1975, and retired from the University in 1997.

He died 15 November 2024 in Calgary, Canada.

== Contributions ==
*At the [[Chemical Abstracts Service]] he directed much of the early work on  on the use of computers to build searchable databases of both journal articles and of the structures of chemical compounds.
*At Sheffield, his work on automatic indexing led onto other textual studies, and then onto a program of research into techniques for processing databases of chemical structures, of chemical reactions, and of chemical patents. Among the applications resulting from his work are text compression, as well as methods for searching databases of chemical substances for substructures, the identification of changes due to chemical reactions, and the design of improved chemical patent information systems. Much of the research was funded by the information industry, and has been influential in the design of present-day systems.
*He leadership and grants made a substantial contribution to the building the research program and research reputation of the Sheffield Information School.

== Publications ==
Lynch produced more than 140 research publications and several textbooks, 1958-1998. [https://web.archive.org/web/20110716080643/http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/is/staff/mfl_pubs.html]
 
*''Library automation; a bibliography''. Sheffield: [Sheffield University], 1966.
*''Computer handling of chemical structure information''. [With J. M Harrison & W. G. Town]. London: Macdonald and Co., 1971. The substance of a course taught in 1968.
*''Computer-based information services in science and technology: principles and techniques''. [Stevenage, UK]: P. Peregrinus [1974]
*"The Sheffield Generic Structures Project - a Retrospective Review." With John D. Holliday. ''Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling'' 36, no 5 (September 1996): 930-936. [DOI:10.1021/ci950173l]

== Awards == 
*Institute of Information Scientists.  President, 1995-96. Annual Award in recognition of services to information science, 1980.
*American Chemical Society. Skolnik Award of for contributions to the theory and practice of chemical information science, 1989.
*The Chemical Structure Association Trust has conferred the Mike Lynch Award at the triennial International Conference on Chemical Structures in the Netherlands since 2002.
*In 1999 the University of Sheffield Information School opened the Michael Lynch Research Lab, named in his honor.

== Further reading ==
*''Remembering Professor Michael F Lynch'' [Obituary]. University of Sheffield, 2024. [https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/alumni/our-alumni/obituaries/remembering-professor-michael-f-lynch]
*"Mike Lynch (information scientist)" ''Wikipedia'' [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lynch_(information_scientist)]