Richard K. Lynt, Microbiologist, 86

[DGH]

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Richard K. Lynt, a senior laboratory investigator who did botulism research for
the microbiology division of the Food and Drug Administration, died of leukemia
April 21, 2003, at Montgomery [Maryland] General Hospital, having lived in the
Leisure World community of Silver Spring, Maryland, at the age of 86.

Mr. Lynt, who retired in 1983, was involved in food investigations that included
recalls in the 1970s of millions of cans of tainted mushrooms and of
vichyssoise. His writings included more than 50 papers on Clostridium botulinum
and other subjects for technical journals and a textbook. He was part of a
delegation of food scientists who visited China in 1985.

Mr. Lynt was a native of Washington DC. He was a graduate of McKinley Technical
High School and the University of Maryland, where he also received a master's
degree in bacteriology. He served in the Navy during World War II, in
assignments that included Bethesda Naval Hospital.

After the war, he was a research microbiologist for what was then Squibb
Pharmaceuticals in New Jersey. He went to work at the National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases in 1951 and did research on viruses there until
transferring to the FDA in 1963.

Mr. Lynt was a member of the Naval Reserve Association, the American Society for
Microbiology, the Institute of Food Technology, the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, the New York Academy of Sciences and the choir of Marvin
Memorial United Methodist Church in Silver Spring. He volunteered with HELP of
Silver Spring. His interests included landscape painting and poetry.