Campbell (April 27, 1929 – April 19, 2018) was an American microbiologist and geneticist whose pioneering work on Lambda phage has helped advance molecular biology in the late 20th century.
Dr.
Campbell has been a professor of in the Department of Biology at Stanford University since 1968, and he was appointed to the Barbara Kimball Browning endowed chair in 1992.
Campbell earned his bachelor's degree at the University of California-Berkeley and master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Illinois.
He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Dr.
Campbell received the 2004 Abbott-ASM Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society for Microbiology at the society's 104th general meeting in New Orleans on Monday, May 24, 2004.
Campbell delivered the Abbott-ASM Award Lecture and was honored at a dinner ceremony that evening.
The award includes a $20,000 cash prize and a commemorative piece.
In honoring Campbell, ASM officials cited his "exceptional insights and achievements in the field of molecular genetics - a career of groundbreaking research that has had a profound influence on several fields, including molecular cloning and gene therapy."
Dr.
Campbell's research has concentrated on the genetics of bacteria and their viruses, especially the integration of viral DNA into host chromosomes.
His most prominent discovery was the proposal of the “Campbell model” of virus insertion, where viral DNA is inserted into the host chromosome, becoming covalently bonded to the bacterial DNA, and then remains dormant until activation.
Dr.
Campbell's research was focused on a specific bacterial virus, phage lambda, and its host bacterium E.
coli, but the model provided insights into how extrachromosomal DNA can be inserted and excised in other organisms.
This model was proposed in the book “Episomes’ published in 1968, which was one of the first comprehensive treatments of plasmid biology.
While study of the regulation of integration and excision of phage lambda in E coli has been a primary focus of his research, Dr.
Campbell and research associates also studied regulation and expression of E coli genes linked to the lambda insertion location, including the biotin (bio) and galactose (gal) genes.