Randall Payne Morton.
Sadly I report the recent death of Randall Payne Morton, Professor of ORL-HNS in Auckland, New Zealand, on the 11 September 2025, after a long and protracted illness.
I first met and worked with Randall during his time as a Research Fellow with Philip Stell in Liverpool in the late 1970s. Randall was accompanied by his wife Hanneke and intended to stay in Liverpool for a year but stayed for some 30 months before travelling onward to South Africa for six months with Sean Sellers. He returned to New Zealand where he was appointed a consultant ENT surgeon and ultimately professor. Randall had two wishes: to complete a PhD and to play the bagpipes, both achieved.
Randall was born in a small town in South Australia. His family moved to Auckland in 1960, where he completed his secondary education and graduated in Medicine at Auckland University in 1970.
Randall was an affable, friendly intellectual with an inquisitive mind, always determined to contribute to the specialty of otolaryngology head and neck surgery. On his return to Auckland, he set up a Head and Neck Cancer Service in New Zealand, which was the envy of many ORL-HNS Departments worldwide. Throughout his professional career he was passionate about teaching at all levels. His clinical career was largely focused on head and neck surgery, pursuing patient clinical outcomes research and clinical epidemiology. He also published on other topics such as ranula and latterly became an expert on sialoendosopy.
Randall's MSc thesis was on the epidemiology of sino-nasal cancer, his Triological Society (USA) thesis and his PhD (2019 Melbourne University) were based on quality-of-life outcomes in head and neck cancer patients. He served in several roles in New Zealand's public health system as well as for the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS) and the New Zealand Society of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, being its President 2003 to 2005. He was a member of the editorial and review boards for several journals and convened several national and international congresses. His fame internationally was recognised with the 2009 Semon Lecturer at the Royal Society of Medicine, London (still available online and a must-read for aspiring head and neck surgeons). Randall was also the Eugene N Myers International Head and Neck Cancer Lecturer of the American Academy of Otolaryngology in 2010.
Together with consultant colleagues Zahoor Ahmed and Malcolm Giles, Randall produced a three-volume textbook Symptom Orientated Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery. This was a typical project of his to turn the standard ORL-HNS textbook on its head, starting with the symptoms rather than a list of diseases!
Randall was a true friend who will be sadly missed, not only by Hanneke, his children - Kim and Katie - his grandchildren and his colleagues among otolaryngologists in Australasia, but also by the worldwide community of head and neck surgeons. He was a giant in his specialty: his research on quality of life in head and neck cancer patients was ground-breaking at the time and has paved the way for patients' views to be considered and included in all future reporting on outcome results of treatments of head and neck cancer.
Professor Patrick J Bradley, Nottingham University Hospitals, Queens Medical Campus, UK.
