In memory of Dr. Henry T. Lynch

Abstract

The worldwide oncology community and all patients subject to hereditable cancers lost a great friend and colleague in early June, 2019. Henry Lynch was literally and figuratively a towering figure, but also a kind and humble man who saw the greatest good in helping to identify and prevent malignancies. I am honored to write this piece in memory of Henry, as I had the great luck of knowing him personally. I saw him last in the Fall of 2017, when he and I were honored by Georgetown University for our work in gastrointestinal cancers. He was wheelchair-bound at the time, but was nevertheless the center of the room, clearly enjoying the evening. I also remember lecturing together with him at a symposium in Belfast, Northern Ireland, some years back. His lectures were, as always, masterly, with great clarity and precision. Each evening, after dinner, he and his wife Jane would join the younger faculty for a pub crawl, and both kept up admirably. Finally, he and his wife contributed a chapter on cancer genetics to the 3rd edition of the Oxford Textbook of Oncology, which I edited 5 years ago. At some point, I heard from Oxford Press that his chapter would be a bit late, as he related to them that his wife had passed away in the midst of writing. I wrote him a letter of condolence, to which he replied “God bless you, Dan”.