It is with immense sadness that NSW Health Pathology acknowledges the death of Professor Richard Scolyer at the age of 59 years on Sunday 7 June 2026. Richard leaves a tremendous legacy of scholarship, advocacy for cancer treatment and prevention, and professional mentorship. His colleagues from NSW Health Pathology have shared the below tribute.

Richard was an esteemed mem­ber of the anatom­i­cal pathol­o­gy depart­ment (now Tis­sue Pathol­o­gy and Diag­nos­tic Oncol­o­gy) at Roy­al Prince Alfred Hos­pi­tal at Camper­down in Syd­ney for over a quar­ter of a cen­tu­ry, hav­ing joined as a pathol­o­gy trainee in 1998, before com­menc­ing as a staff spe­cial­ist in ear­ly 2001.

Over that time his per­son­al achieve­ments have been prodi­gious and he was recog­nised as the world’s lead­ing melanoma pathol­o­gist over a decade ago as well as one of the world’s top melanoma researchers.

Among his many career highlights:
• Appoint­ed as Co-Med­ical direc­tor of the Melanoma Insti­tute of Aus­tralia (MIA) in 2017
• Chair of 1st and 2nd edi­tions of the Inter­na­tion­al Col­lab­o­ra­tion on Can­cer Report­ing Melanoma dataset author­ing com­mit­tee in 2013 and 2017 (set­ting the glob­al stan­dard for pathol­o­gy report­ing of melanoma); author and edi­tor for the 4th and 5th WHO Clas­si­fi­ca­tions of Tumours Skin Tumours vol­umes (2017 and 2022)
• Co-Lead of the Cuta­neous Melanoma Chap­ter of the 8th Edi­tion of the Amer­i­can Joint Com­mis­sion on Can­cer Stag­ing in 2017 (set­ting the glob­al stan­dard for melanoma staging).

Richard was tire­less in his com­mit­ment to melanoma research. He pub­lished over 900 peer-reviewed jour­nal arti­cles, includ­ing ground­break­ing stud­ies that deep­ened the sci­en­tif­ic under­stand­ing of the mol­e­c­u­lar mech­a­nisms under­ly­ing melanoma and which rad­i­cal­ly changed the par­a­digm for the treat­ment of metasta­t­ic melanoma, con­tribut­ing to improved patient out­comes and sav­ing count­less lives.

In recog­ni­tion of his con­tri­bu­tions, Richard received numer­ous hon­ours including:
• the NSW Premier’s Award for Out­stand­ing Can­cer Researcher of the Year in 2020
• the Uni­ver­si­ty of Syd­ney Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Out­stand­ing Research in 2021
• the Roy­al Col­lege of Pathol­o­gists’ Dis­tin­guished Fel­low Award in 2022
• the Inter­na­tion­al Acad­e­my of Pathol­o­gy (IAP), Aus­tralasian Branch’s Dis­tin­guished Pathol­o­gist Award in 2023
• the IAP the David F Hard­wick IAP Gold Medal Award in 2024
• award­ed an hon­orary doc­tor­ate in 2026 by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Syd­ney “in recog­ni­tion of his out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions to melanoma science”.

Despite his pro­fes­sion­al suc­cess and the numer­ous awards, Richard was always hum­ble, self-dep­re­cat­ing and ground­ed. His stead­fast com­mit­ment to improv­ing the lives of can­cer suf­fer­ers was exem­pli­fied by his tire­less work as joint Aus­tralian of the Year in 2024, despite being diag­nosed with glioblas­toma in June 2023. His gru­el­ing sched­ule of engage­ments dur­ing that year, includ­ing numer­ous fund-rais­ing events for can­cer fund­ing and advo­ca­cy, epit­o­mised his dri­ve and determination.

He was high­ly respect­ed by his col­leagues for his per­son­al qual­i­ties, not least for his can-do atti­tude, gen­eros­i­ty, self­less­ness and integri­ty. Richard was always the first to acknowl­edge the con­tri­bu­tions of oth­ers and had a “plen­ty” mind­set, as he said him­self “a ris­ing tide works to float all boats” so that every­one ben­e­fits. He has pro­vid­ed his pro­fes­sion­al exper­tise and advice freely and gen­er­ous­ly to med­ical col­leagues, both in pathol­o­gy and oth­er spe­cial­ties, as well as to con­sumer groups and patients.

It could be over­looked amidst his numer­ous oth­er achieve­ments, but Richard had a long­stand­ing com­mit­ment to the edu­ca­tion and train­ing of the next gen­er­a­tion of pathol­o­gists and melanoma spe­cial­ists. He has deliv­ered hun­dreds of lec­tures to con­fer­ences, med­ical stu­dents and pathol­o­gy trainees. Through the Melanoma Insti­tute of Aus­tralia and the depart­ment of Tis­sue Pathol­o­gy and Diag­nos­tic Oncol­o­gy at RPA he has trained and men­tored a gen­er­a­tion of melanoma fel­lows (junior pathol­o­gists), aim­ing to improve the qual­i­ty of melanoma pathol­o­gy report­ing nation­al­ly and to encour­age oth­ers to con­tribute to melanoma research. Through­out this work, includ­ing as Pres­i­dent of the Inter­na­tion­al Acad­e­my of Pathol­o­gy, Aus­tralasian Branch, he had a clear focus on gen­der equi­ty and has active­ly encour­aged and spon­sored female colleagues.

On behalf of NSW Health Pathol­o­gy and pathol­o­gy at RPAH we want to acknowl­edge Richard’s tru­ly inspi­ra­tional lead­er­ship, out­stand­ing achieve­ments and gen­er­ous men­tor­ing of col­leagues. It has been a priv­i­lege for all of us to work with him over the years and we are tru­ly grate­ful for every­thing he has done for the pro­fes­sion, med­ical research and edu­ca­tion, and for patients.

Our thoughts, love and sin­cere con­do­lences go out to his wife Katie and his chil­dren Emi­ly, Matthew and Lucy in their pro­found loss.

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