After obtaining bachelor's degrees in mathematics and philosophy from the University of Illinois, Lynch accepted a position in 1979 as an engineering physicist at Fermilab where he spent some time working on the PDP-11 hardware project.
Cloak on socially transmitted technology in birds, and a brief proposal for a field of Memetics in Richard Dawkins' book, The Selfish Gene, although Lynch was not aware of these authors' work until after his own theory was substantially developed.
In August 2004, Lynch appeared to accuse Fast Company magazine and Seth Godin of plagiarism, claiming his complaint was backed, or even encouraged, by an unnamed 'major writers organization'.
[1] Aaron Lynch died on November 14, 2005, at the age of 47, from anoxic encephalopathy after taking an overdose of an opiate-based pain killer, described as an accident in the Cook County, Illinois Coroner's Report.
However, unlike computer viruses, ideas often evolve new or improved contagious properties without intentional human design, through copying infidelity mutations or recombination into powerful new belief sets.
Lynch's thesis offered an explanation for how not only true and useful ideas, but also unprovable or even false notions with sufficiently "contagious" properties could, over generations, become the predominant beliefs of whole societies.