Professor Richard A Scolyer AO has written an open letter to Australians to be published after his death, turning his final goodbye into a public record of a life spent in medicine, research and advocacy. The melanoma pathologist, who said he was diagnosed with glioblastoma in May 2023, used the letter to speak directly to the country he spent years urging to take brain cancer more seriously.
That is why his name is being searched now. Scolyer did not write the letter as a conventional tribute or a polished legacy statement. He wrote it while living with terminal brain cancer, and he framed it as both a farewell and a final account of what the illness had taken from him and what he hoped it could still give others: honesty, urgency and a push for better treatment.
In the letter, Scolyer said he had spent the last three years being open about his glioblastoma journey so patients and families could better understand what they face, and so he could keep pressing for progress. He said he was proud of a 35-year working life devoted to patient care, cancer research and improving lives. He also pointed to a career that took him from helping start what is now the world’s largest melanoma biobank to becoming the world’s most published melanoma pathologist, with more than 1,000 research publications, hundreds of lectures around the world and leadership roles with the American Joint Committee on Cancer and the World Health Organisation.
He described himself as the first patient to receive experimental brain cancer treatment based on melanoma science he helped develop, and said he took part in developing a brain cancer clinical trial while continuing to argue for greater investment in research. The letter makes plain that his last message was not only about what he had lost, but about what he believed was still possible if the field kept moving.
The hardest part of the letter sits inside that same optimism. Scolyer wrote of a life filled with happiness, opportunity and passion, even as he prepared a final goodbye for publication after his passing. He thanked Katie, and his children Emily, Matthew and Lucy, for their love, support, strength and compassion throughout his cancer journey. The farewell lands with unusual force because it comes from a doctor who spent his career studying disease and spent his final years trying to turn his own diagnosis into a lesson for everyone else.
What remains unresolved is the date the letter will appear and the exact moment it will be released to the public. But the message itself is already complete: Scolyer wanted Australians to read his words after he was gone, and he left behind a final statement that ties his personal loss to a broader plea for brain cancer research to keep advancing.
