Category: News

February 21, 1932 – November 15, 2024

One of the pioneers of chemical information, Michael (Mike) Felix Lynch, has died at the age of 92. Mike obtained B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in chemistry at University College, Dublin before conducting postdoctoral research at ETH Zürich with Vladimir Prelog, the recipient of the 1975 Nobel Prize for chemistry. He then worked for two years with Ciba-Geigy in Cambridge U.K., before moving to the United States in 1961 to work for Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS). At this time, CAS was conducting some of the first research anywhere on the use of computers to build searchable databases of both journal abstracts and of the structures of chemical compounds, and Mike directed much of this work when he became Head of the Basic Research Department.^1,2

On returning to the United Kingdom in 1965, he was awarded a research grant by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information to conduct studies of the automatic indexing of textual documents. He joined the University of Sheffield’s Postgraduate School of Librarianship (as it was then named, now the Information School) to conduct this research, and spent the rest of his career there until his retirement in 1997. Mike can truly be regarded as the founding father of information science research at Sheffield: starting as a Senior Research Fellow, he joined the permanent staff in 1968, and in 1974 he was appointed to the personal chair which made him the first professor of information science in the United Kingdom.

Mike’s initial research in Sheffield involved the development of methods for the automated production of articulated subject indexes such as those used in the CAS subject indexes.³ This work was followed by initial studies of techniques for the indexing, storage, and retrieval of chemical reaction information. These studies, which focused on the identification of the reaction center involved in a transformation, continued for over a decade before the development of graph-matching techniques that, after extensive subsequent refinement, underlie modern reaction retrieval systems.^4,5 While this work was under way he started to develop and test systematic approaches for the selection of fragment substructures⁶ for screening chemical substructure searches, and was also responsible for probably the first book anywhere on the computer handling of chemical structures.⁷ In addition to their use in chemical information systems, the selection techniques developed for screening subsequently found application in several types of textual processing, for example, for compression, for sorting, and for searching online catalogs.⁸

Much of the second half of Mike’s Sheffield career, from 1980 onwards, was devoted to the development of techniques for the representation, storage, and retrieval of the generic (Markush) structures that characterize many chemical patents. This work extended over some 15 years and was carried out in collaboration with CAS, Derwent, and International Documentation for Chemistry (IDC).^9,10 Other areas of interest in this period included the use of parallel computer architectures for database searching¹¹ and the application of natural language processing methods to the textual components of chemical patents.¹²

When Mike arrived in Sheffield in the mid-1960s, there was very little computer-related research being undertaken in library schools in the United Kingdom. His work established a tradition that has enabled the Sheffield school to play a leading role over the years in the development not just of chemical information but also of information science more generally, with several of the researchers that he supervised subsequently following academic careers in Sheffield.

During his career he received many awards, perhaps most notably the 1989 Herman Skolnik Award of the ACS Division of Chemical Information for his “pioneering research of more than two decades on the development of methods for the storage, manipulation, and retrieval of chemical structures and reactions as well as related bibliographic information”. A further mark of recognition was the 2002 creation by the Chemical Structure Association Trust of an award in his name to recognize and encourage “outstanding accomplishments in education, research, and development activities that are related to the systems and methods used to store, process, and retrieve information about chemical structures, reactions, and properties”.

Mike had a huge impact not just on our own careers, but upon the whole profession, yet he will be remembered not only for his outstanding professional achievements, but also for his remarkable personal qualities. He was a practicing Roman Catholic and a devoted family man. He loved classical chamber music. He was kind and gently spoken. To journal editors who needed papers reviewing, Mike was known as a real “softie”: he looked for the value in everyone’s work and was never excessively critical. These qualities are well illustrated by the comments of one of his doctoral students, John Barnard: “Mike was generous in the independence he gave his students, without in any way stinting in the support he offered. When he was invited to talk about the Sheffield Generic Chemical Structures project at a conference, just six months after its inception, he immediately suggested that my fellow student on the project, Steve Welford, and I should do the talking instead. That immediately projected Steve and me into the center of the international chemical information community and provided us with contacts that directly benefited our subsequent careers. Mike involved us in all aspects of the development of the project, including discussions with potential funders, recruitment of additional staff, and as shareholders in its commercial exploitation. Mike’s easygoing and gentle Irish character made him an ideal companion on social occasions, whether in the bar at conferences, for pub lunches, or at the informal dinners at his home so often given for scientists visiting our project. I literally owe my entire career in chemical information systems to Mike, and it was a privilege and a pleasure to have been one of his students”.

Michael’s first wife, Mary, died of a heart condition in 1993. In 1995, he married Mary Dykstra, a professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada who had studied in Michael’s department at the University of Sheffield. They had a long and happy retirement, traveling extensively and living in both Sheffield and Nova Scotia. Mary survives him. Our sympathies also go to Catherine and Kevin, his children by his first wife; his stepsons, Mark and Jeffery Dykstra; his eight grandchildren; and other members of his extended family worldwide.

References

1. Dyson, G. M.; Lynch, M. F. Chemical-biological activities: a computer-produced express digest. J. Chem. Doc. 1963, 3, 81-85. https://doi.org/10.1021/c160009a011
2. Cossum, W. E.; Krakiwsky, M. L.; Lynch, M. F. Advances in automatic chemical substructure searching techniques. J. Chem. Doc. 1965, 5 (1), 33-35. https://doi.org/10.1021/c160016a006
3. Armitage, J. E.; Lynch, M. F. Articulation in the generation of subject indexes by computer. J. Chem. Doc. 1967, 7 (3), 170-178. https://doi.org/10.1021/c160026a010
4. Armitage, J. E.; Lynch, M. F. Automatic detection of structural similarities among chemical compounds. J. Chem. Soc. C 1967, 521-528. https://doi.org/10.1039/j39670000521
5. Lynch, M. F.; Willett, P. The automatic detection of chemical reaction sites. J. Chem. Inf. Comput. Sci. 1978, 18 (3), 154-159. https://doi.org/10.1021/ci60015a009
6. Adamson, G. W.; Cowell, J.; Lynch, M. F.; McLure, A. H. W.; Town, W. G.; Yapp, A. M. Strategic considerations in the design of a screening system for substructure of chemical structure files. J. Chem. Doc. 1973, 13 (3), 153-157. https://doi.org/10.1021/c160050a013
7. Lynch, M.; Harrison, J. M.; Town, W. G.; Ash, J. Computer Handling of Chemical Structure Information, Macdonald, London and American Elsevier, New York, 1971. http://openlibrary.org/books/OL4770313M/Computer_handling_of_chemical_structure_information
8. Lynch, M. F. Variety generation—a reinterpretation of Shannon’s mathematical theory of communication, and its implications for information science. J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci. 1977, 28 (1), 19-25. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.4630280104
9. Lynch, M. F.; Barnard, J. M.; Welford, S. M. Computer storage and retrieval of generic chemical structures in patents. 1. Introduction and general strategy. J. Chem. Inf. Comput. Sci. 1981, 21 (3), 148-150. https://doi.org/10.1021/ci00031a009
10. Lynch, M. F.; Holliday, J. D. The Sheffield generic structures project-a retrospective review. J. Chem. Inf. Comput. Sci. 1996, 36 (5), 930-936. https://doi.org/10.1021/ci950173l
11. Brint, A. T.; Gillet, V. J.; Lynch, M. F.; Willett, P.; Manson, G. A.; Wilson, G. A. Chemical graph matching using transputer networks. Parallel Comput. 1988, 8 (1), 295-300. https://doi.org/10.1016/0167-8191(88)90133-0
12. Lawson, M.; Kemp, N.; Lynch, M. F.; Chowdhury, G. G. Automatic extraction of citations from the text of English-language patents – an example of template mining. J. Inf. Sci. 1996, 22 (6), 423-436. https://doi.org/10.1177/016555159602200604

Wendy Warr and Peter Willett

January 18, 2025

See also:

• University of Sheffield Information School’s History
• Obituary Information for Michael Felix Lynch from the Choice Memorial Funeral Home
• CSA Trust Mike Lynch Award | CSA Trust Mike Lynch Award Winners