Anthony Campbell

Anthony was born in Bangor, North Wales, but grew up in London, attending the City of London School. He obtained a first class degree in Natural Sciences, and a PhD in Biochemistry at Cambridge University. He moved to Cardiff as lecturer in Medical Biochemistry in 1970, and is now Professor in the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at Cardiff University.

He has worked extensively with bioluminescence, animals that produce light, and on how calcium regulates processes inside cells. He is ran expert in lactose and food intolerance, his research leading to a new hypothesis on the cause of irritable bowel syndrome, and

the mystery illness that afflicted Charles Darwin for 50 years, but was never cured. This revolutionary mechanism provides a link between the gut and the brain, explaining how Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases develop. He pioneered the use of genetically engineered bioluminescence to measure chemical processes in live cells. He has published 10 books, and over 250 internationally peer-reviewed papers. His latest book, ‘Fundamentals of Intracellular calcium’, is a student text and  will be published later this year (2017). Several of his patents have been exploited throughout the world. One of his inventions, using chemiluminescence, is now used in several hundred million clinical tests per year world wide, was awarded the Queen’s Anniversary Prize in 1998, and was selected by the Eureka project of Universities UK in 2006 as one of the top hundred inventions and discoveries from UK Universities in the past fifty years.

He believes passionately about communicating science to the public, and in exciting pupils and students about natural history and cutting edge science. This led him to found the Darwin Centre (www.darwincentre.com) in 1993, now in Pembrokeshire. He also founded the Public Understanding of Science (PUSH) group at Cardiff University in 1994, which organises many events with schools and the public. He gives regular talks on food intolerance, Darwin, and bioluminescence, at scientific meetings, to schools and the public. He won the Inspire Wales award for Science and Technology in 2011. He was elected a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales in 2013. He is a Fellow of the Linnean Society, and was elected to the Council of the in 2013. He founded The Young Darwinian, with his wife Stephanie Matthews, in 2017.

Here is the front cover of his new student book to be published by Wiley this year (2018).

 Click here to see his Cardiff University web page