And so it’s happened. Three years after a devastating brain cancer diagnosis, Professor Richard Scolyer has gone.
I won’t be alone in finding the news of his death, at the age of 59, raw and numbing. It was expected given how much his health had declined in recent weeks but it still feels shocking and sudden and sad.
There is often widespread mourning when a celebrity dies – an actor or a musician we feel like we know from their work. Rich was not a celebrity. He spent all bar the last three years of his professional life virtually unknown outside the medical and cancer research communities.
But there will be grief around the country that this brutal disease has taken his life.
Some mourners will be fellow cancer patients and their loved ones who saw his attitude and achievements since diagnosis as inspiring. His positivity was a lantern in the enveloping darkness of serious illness.
Others will have been moved by how Rich opened up when he and Professor Georgina Long were jointly named 2024 Australian of the Year.
“I stand here tonight as a terminal brain cancer patient,” he said to a room – and doubtless a national television audience – struck silent by emotion. “I’m only 57. I don’t want to die. I love my life, my family, my work. I’ve so much more to do and to give.”
Rich continued this honesty and openness on many fronts – in regular posts on social media, on Australian Story and A Current Affair, in interviews for this masthead and other newspapers. He was humble and gracious whenever someone he didn’t know came up to him in public, often with tears in their eyes, to say thanks for everything he was doing.
We became friends writing the memoir Brainstorm together.
We had a connection before that: Rich and Georgina were co-medical directors of Melanoma Institute Australia. I’d never heard of it when I was diagnosed out of the blue with stage four melanoma in 2019.
The immunotherapy drugs the institute had successfully pioneered for melanoma patients saved my life; Rich and Georgina hoped they would do the same in brain cancer, with him as patient number one.
When he asked if I’d be interested in writing the book in 2023, I was honoured. It was such a compelling story: after a shocking diagnosis, a brilliant doctor courageously trials a new treatment that could kill him quickly, hoping that it can benefit future patients.
Rich knew it probably wouldn’t save his life, but he jumped at the chance, offered by Georgina, to try something bold and risky to help others.
I wondered if I’d see another side to Rich as I came to know him.
He was a high achiever, building an international reputation as a pathologist diagnosing the most difficult skin cancer cases, co-authoring more than 1000 research papers and speaking at hundreds of conferences and seminars, often about the breakthroughs made at the institute.
His other titles reflected his impressive career: senior staff specialist in anatomical pathology at Sydney’s Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and conjoint professor at the University of Sydney.
In his private life, Rich was husband to Dr Katie Nicoll and father to Emily, Matthew and Lucy. He was a triathlete who represented Australia at age group world championships.
As all that suggests, he was definitely driven. But he was also genuinely kind, caring and humble, wanting the best outcomes for cancer patients.
Passionate about making the most of whatever time he had left, Rich pushed himself just 12 weeks ago by cycling more than 500 kilometres over the four Tasmanian stages of the Tour de Cure, raising funds for cancer research.
He caught a plane to Tasmania just after getting a bad result in a scan. Some of us would have stayed home and prepared for the end. Rich wanted to keep living as full a life as possible.
A brilliant public speaker, he held things together enough to film in advance an inspiring speech for medical and health graduates when he was awarded an honorary doctorate at the University of Sydney six weeks ago as the growing tumour affected his brain.
For three years, Rich seemed unstoppable. It’s devastating that he is no longer with us and we are all poorer for it.
But his legacy will be long-lasting. There are the clinical trials based on his experimental treatment that could potentially revolutionise brain cancer treatment. There’s the funding towards the Professor Richard Scolyer Chair in Brain Cancer Research at Chris O’Brien Lifehouse. And, on a human level, other patients might find it easier to talk about cancer and take heart from his positivity.
During three often-difficult years, he really was the best of us.
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