William Cecil Campbell (PhD, Nobel)

Dr. William Cecil Campbell, a biologist and parasitologist, is renowned for discovering a novel therapy for infections caused by roundworms, an achievement that won him a share of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Campbell was born in Ireland and attended college in Dublin, later earning his PhD at the University of Wisconsin on a Fulbright Scholarship in 1957. He then spent 33 years at Merck Institute for Therapeutic Research as a senior scientist. Like many intellectually inclined Christians, Dr. Campbell's faith is not always clear cut: "I believe in God. I pray every single night of my life, but I have a very complicated sense of religion, and I am pretty fuzzy in that segment of my life." Campbell also said: "Gabriel Rossetti, the English poet, felt sorry for atheists because they didn't have anybody to feel grateful to. That always stuck with me, because we have so much to be grateful for. I believe, and I believe in prayer."