Henry T. Lynch

In 1984 he established the Hereditary Cancer Prevention Clinic at Creighton, which focuses on identifying risk factors, promoting early detection, and preventing the onset of familial cancers. Under his leadership Creighton also hosts a High Risk Registry, part of the Early Detection Research Network sponsored by the National Cancer Institute. The Registry allows the Network to educate individual patients about their genetic risk status. Lynch died of congestive heart failure on June 2, 2019, at the age of 91.

In 1970 he applied for a research grant from the National Institutes of Health, citing a family in which numerous members had colon cancer, but the grant application was rejected, as were most of his other grant applications over the following 20 years. He persisted, compiling data and statistics that demonstrated patterns of "cancer syndromes" through multiple generations of families.

He served as an assistant professor at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, then joined the faculty at Creighton University in 1967. Noting that some cancer patients had relatives and ancestors with the same type of cancer, Lynch postulated that cancer could be hereditary. He began to focus his research on that possibility, although it was considered unlikely by the medical establishment of the time, which was focused on environmental causes of cancer; in fact the American Cancer Society frequently stated that cancer was not hereditary.

He studied for a Ph.D. in human genetics from the University of Texas at Austin and received an M.D. from the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston in 1960. He interned at St. Mary's Hospital in Evansville, Indiana and completed a residency in internal medicine at the University of Nebraska College of Medicine.

After his discharge in 1946 he became a professional boxer under the nickname "Hammerin' Hank". After obtaining a high school equivalency, he received a bachelor's degree from the University of Oklahoma in 1951 and a master's degree in clinical psychology from the University of Denver in 1952.

Henry Thompson Lynch (January 4, 1928 – June 2, 2019) was an American physician noted for his discovery of familial susceptibility to certain kinds of cancer and his research into genetic links to cancer.