Frederick T. Hatch

Frederick Tasker Hatch died Jan. 14. He was 93.
 
A research scientist, Hatch was born in Boston in August 1924, the son of Frederick Southard and Beatrice (Tasker) Hatch. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1944, from Harvard Medical School in 1948 and received a Ph.D in biochemistry from MIT in 1960. He took his internship at Roosevelt Hospital in New York in 1948-1949 and was a research fellow at Columbia from 1949 to 1952. He joined the army as a Captain in 1952, working on nutrition and cold weather research until 1955. He spent the next five years at MIT.

From 1960-1965, he worked for the American Heart Association at the Massachusetts General Hospital. From 1965 to 1980 he was a senior scientist and section leader at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California. He was then appointed an assistant associate director of LLNL’s BioMed division and remained in that position until he retired to Meredith, New Hampshire in 1987.

His research spanned a wide variety of topics over the years, including lipid and lipoprotein metabolism, atherosclerosis, coronary heart disease risk factors, satellite DNA structures (especially in the kangaroo rat) and food mutagens. He authored or contributed to scores of articles and book chapters.

During his time in Meredith, he was secretary of the Land Conservation Task Force in 1989-90, chairman of the Transportation Advisory Committee from 1994-2008, a member of the Meredith Historical Society and most recently a member of the Project Advisory Committee for the New Hampshire Department of Transportation. He and his wife, Virginia, were named Meredith Citizens of the Year in the mid-1990s.

He met the love of his life, Virginia, on the ski slopes. That typified his love for outdoor activities, including skiing (both downhill and cross-country), as well as hunting and fishing. He spent a good deal of time administering the conservation of the nearly 100-acre plot on which they lived, introducing a bit of technology by getting involved in GPS studies of the land. He also enjoyed exploring New Hampshire’s back country.

He is survived by his wife of 71 years, Virginia Ethel Weeks Hatch; four children, Daniel, Daphne, Deborah and Douglas; three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

The family can be contacted by daphnehatch [at] gmail.com (email)  or by U.S. mail: Daphne Hatch, 67 Pinheiro Circle, Novato, California 94945. Donations in his honor can be made to the American Heart Association.