A cancer researcher who helped develop a treatment for melanoma before using a similar approach to tackle his own incurable brain cancer has died aged 59.
Richard Scolyer, the first person to undergo a pioneering treatment for brain tumour, died three years after his diagnosis, on 7 June.
In 2024, he was named joint Australian of the Year along with his friend and fellow scientist Georgina Long.
Together they took what they had learnt studying skin cancer to treat Scolyer’s grade-four glioblastoma, described by the scientist himself as the “worst subtype of brain cancer” that causes “certain death”.
He told Times Higher Education at the time that “there was understandable resistance from some in the medical community” regarding his decision.
