Kenneth Greer Malcomson was born in Belfast on 13 March 1919, and educated at Bootham School, York and Queen's University, Belfast where he graduated in medicine with honours in 1943. As an undergraduate he had won the Symington Medal and first class honours in anatomy, and during his clinical studies he was awarded the Smyth Prize in Surgery, and three university scholarships. For two years after graduation he worked in junior hospital posts in Belfast and then joined the RAMC, being for a year in command of the otological department of the British Military Hospital at Fayid, Egypt. In 1950 he obtained the Edinburgh Fellowship, and then came to London to work partly at research at the Royal College of Surgeons and Guy's Hospital, and also to hold clinical appointments at Guy's where he was registrar in otolaryngology from 1952 to 1954. He was Leverhulme Research Fellow in otolaryngology at the College from 1953 till 1957, taking the DLO and the FRCS in otolaryngology in 1953. In 1957 he went to Bristol as consultant otolaryngologist to the United Bristol Hospitals, with an associated university appointment. In 1958 he obtained the MD degree at Queen's University Belfast. Even this brief account is sufficient to indicate the enthusiasm with which he applied himself to the clinical research aspects of his specialty, and he made important contributions to the understanding of vasomotor and allergic disorders of the nasal mucosa. He persisted in his scientific investigations, combining them with a busy surgical practice, and in the course of time he began to show some evidence of strain and overwork. He died suddenly on 27 December 1971, aged 52, and was survived by his wife and two children.