Dr. Clara Lynch; Noted Researcher on Cancer, Aging

Dr. Clara Lynch, a prominent cancer and aging researcher credited with introducing Swiss mice into American laboratories, died Sunday at an Alexandria, Va., nursing home, Rockefeller University officials said. She was 103.

She was believed to be the first researcher to prove that susceptibility to the development of tumors in the lungs and mammary glands of mice can be passed on to offspring.

A researcher and teacher at Rockefeller University for 53 years, she introduced Swiss mice for use in the United States in 1926, carrying two of them across the ocean from Lausanne, Switzerland, in a shoe box. They became the progenitors for the mice now easily bred in the laboratory and widely used for medical research.

Born in Ohio in 1882

Born in Canton, Ohio, on March 6, 1882, Dr. Lynch received an undergraduate degree from Smith College in 1903 and graduate degrees from Columbia University in 1912 and 1919.