Professor William B. Coman
AM, MD, MBBS Qld, 
FRCS Edin, FRCS Eng, FRACS, FACS, FRCS Eng Hon, FACS Hon
Emeritus Professor, Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, University of Queensland, Australia

Matriculated for University of Queensland after completing his Senior year at Nudgee College in 1956.  He had represented the College as Vice Captain of the First XV rugby team and obtained a Commonwealth Scholarship to the University of Queensland.  Following graduation he worked as a Registrar at the Mater Hospital in Brisbane and then at the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh and as a Senior Registrar at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London from 1967 to 1969.  

He obtained the FRCS Edinburgh in 1966 and the FRCS England and FRACS in 1969.  He was awarded the Fellow of American College of Surgeons in 1974.  He obtained his MD in 2006 from the University of Queensland with the topic of his MD thesis being the “Optimum Management of Head and Neck Cancer”.  

In the year 2012 he was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the English College of Surgeons.
In the year 2014 he was awarded Life Membership to the Australian Society of Head and Neck Surgeons.  In 2015 he was awarded an Honorary Fellowship to the American College of Surgeons. 

He was appointed as a Consultant ENT Surgeon to the Princess Alexandra Hospital and he has served as the Garnett Passe Rodney Williams Memorial Foundation Professor of Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery from 1999 to 2011.  During this time he organized overseas training for Australian Registrars at Oxford, Bristol, St. Bartholomew’s and Guy’s Hospital London, John Hopkins University USA, University of Virginia, University of Iowa, University of Vermont, New York and Lund University Sweden.  Some 36 overseas Fellows and researchers have worked in the Department of Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery Princess Alexandra Hospital, under his patronage, the University of Queensland and Griffith University.  He has also served as Professor Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery for Griffith University.

Garnett Passe and Rodney Williams Memorial Foundation

Garnett Passe was born in South Africa and came to Australia as a young child.  He was educated in Melbourne and graduated from the University of Melbourne from the faculty of dentistry.  On graduation in dentistry he travelled by ship to London and enrolled in the faculty of medicine at the University of London from which he graduated.  Following his graduation he became an ENT surgeon.  He first served on a destroyer in the Atlantic during the Second World War and during this service he was able to visit Dr Julius Lempert in New York and observed Dr Lempert’s approach to otosclerosis by carrying out the fenustration operation, along with his surgery for chronic suppurative otitis media.

When he returned to London, Dr Garnett Passe became a noted otologist.  He married Barbara Slatter, an Englishwoman who had considerable financial interests in Africa.  At the age of 48 years, Dr Garnett Passe had a haemoptysis and died.   His wife Barbara had seen how difficult it was for young Australians to get an education in the specialty of Otolaryngology and vowed to leave some funding to the Australian ENT Society for the pursuit of excellence in the speciality of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery.  

The foundation has been active now for 25 years since the death of Barbara.  During this time the Foundation has contributed to the funding of three University Chairs, one in Perth, one at the University of Queensland at the Princess Alexandra Hospital and a third in Rhinology at the Royal Brisbane Hospital.  

The foundation has contributed $55m to research projects and the current presentation will indicate where these monies have been invested for research and how important it is for the Foundation to continue to invest in the specialty in New Zealand.