Professor Ross Coles
Audiologist whose research helped sufferers of tinnitus
PROFESSOR ROSS COLES, who has died aged 89, was a medical audiologist, a leading light in research into the use of binaural (both ears) hearing aids for both adults and children and played an important part in establishing more clinical support for sufferers of tinnitus.
Robert Ross Adlard Coles was born on the Isle of Wight on December 18 1927. When war broke out he was holidaying with relatives living on the Isle of Man and stayed there throughout the war years.
He was educated at King William’s College, Isle of Man, from 1939 to 1945, and the following year he was awarded the annual Manx (Henry Bloom Noble) University scholarship. He read Natural Sciences and Medicine at Clare College, Cambridge, from 1946 to 1949, before attending St Mary’s Hospital Medical School, from where he qualified as a doctor in 1952.
His father, Adlard Coles, the famous yachtsman and author, engendered in Ross a lifelong love of the sea, and he was captain of the university sailing team.
In 1953 he did his National Service as Temporary Acting Surgeon Lieutenant, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR). Within a year he was transferred to the Royal Navy and worked most of the next 16 years at the Royal Navy Medical School (later the Institute of Naval Medicine) at Alverstoke, researching the effects on hearing of engine and explosive noises. During his time in the Navy he also worked for two years serving on Britannia as part-time sailing master of the Dragon-class yacht Bluebottle, a wedding gift to Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh.
In 1970 Coles retired from the Navy in the rank of Surgeon Lieutenant Commander and started as a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research (ISVR) at the University of Southampton. He introduced and developed functioning clinical audiology within the ISVR and with time he gathered together a very good team of audiology researchers. The Audiology Clinic under his guidance became one of the best in Britain.
Coles encouraged original research in a wide area of scientific audiology (particularly involving the use of binaural hearing aids) and went on to establish the MSC course in Audiology at the ISVR. He also helped to start the audiological services in the National Health Service.
After leaving the ISVR, Coles was appointed Deputy Director of the Institute of Hearing Research under the Medical Research Council at the University of Nottingham from 1978-1992.
As well as the aural rehabilitation of hearingimpaired adults and children, he also researched the terrible disorders affecting those with impaired hearing, especially tinnitus, in which people experience disturbing and distressing continuous noises in one or both ears or in the head. His early research into this disorder came at a time when it was a totally neglected area.
Coles was involved in developing the Nottingham Tinnitus Clinic and the Nottingham Tinnitus course, which are still ongoing.
After retirement in 1992, Coles continued his research and his medicolegal audiological career involving court appearances, testifying as an expert witness in cases of claims for personal injury for noise-induced hearing loss. He helped to establish the case for compensation for this group of victims in English jurisprudence.
In 1965 he was awarded the Gilbert Blane Medal given to the best medical officer that year. In 1992 he was President of the Otology section of the Royal Society of Medicine. He became a founder member of the British Society of Audiology in 1967 and Chairman in 1994.
Coles wrote widely in medical, scientific and legal journals – some 200 publications. His last article was published in 2016 when he was 89. Just before his death he was writing his own obituary for various institutions.