Keith Henry Stockman Campbell (23 May 1954 – 5 October 2012)^[1] was a Britishbiologist who was a member of the team atRoslin Institute that in 1996 first cloned a mammal, aFinnish Dorset lamb namedDolly, from fully differentiated adult mammary cells. He was Professor of Animal Development at theUniversity of Nottingham.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7]} In 2008, he received theShaw Prize for Medicine and Life Sciences jointly withIan Wilmut andShinya Yamanaka for "their works on the cell differentiation in mammals".

Campbell was born inBirmingham, England, to an English mother and Scottish father. He started his education inPerth, Scotland, but, when he was eight years old, his family returned to Birmingham, where he attendedKing Edward VI Camp Hill School for Boys.^[8] He obtained his Bachelor of Science degree inmicrobiology from theQueen Elizabeth College,University of London (now part ofKing's College London).^[9] In 1983 Campbell was awarded theMarie Curie Research Scholarship, which led to postgraduate studies and later his PhD from theUniversity of Sussex^[10] (Brighton, England, UK).^[11][12][13]

Campbell's interest in cloning mammals was inspired by work done by Karl Illmensee andJohn Gurdon.^{[citation needed]} Working at theRoslin Institute since 1991, Campbell became involved with the cloning efforts led byIan Wilmut. In July 1995 Keith Campbell and Bill Ritchie succeeded in producing a pair of lambs, Megan and Morag from embryonic cells, which had differentiated in culture.

In 1996, a team led byIan Wilmut with Keith Campbell as the main contributor, used the same technique and shocked the world by successfully cloning a sheep from adult mammary cells. Dolly, a Finn Dorset sheep named after the singerDolly Parton, was born in 1996 and lived to be six years old (dying from a viral infection and not old age, as has been suggested). Campbell had a key role in the creation of Dolly, as he had the crucial idea of co-ordinating the stages of the "cell cycle" of the donor somatic cells and the recipient eggs and using diploid quiescent or "G0" arrested somatic cells as nuclear donors. In 2006,Ian Wilmut admitted that Campbell deserved "66 per cent" of the credit.^[14]

In 1997, Ritchie and Campbell in collaboration with PPL (Pharmaceutical Proteins Limited) created another sheep named "Polly", created from genetically altered skin cells containing a human gene.^[15] In 2000, after joining PPL Ltd, Campbell and his PPL team (based in North America) were successful in producing the world's first piglets bySomatic-cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), the so-called cloning technique. Furthermore, the PPL teams based in Roslin, Scotland and Blacksburg (USA) used the technique to produce the first gene targeted domestic animals as well as a range of animals producing human therapeutic proteins in their milk.^[16][17]

From November 1999, Campbell held the post of Professor of Animal Development, Division of Animal Physiology, School of Biosciences at theUniversity of Nottingham where he continued to study embryo growth and differentiation. He supported the use of SCNT for the production of personalised stem cell therapies and for the study of human diseases and the use of cybrid embryo production to overcome the lack of human eggs available for research. Stem cells can be isolated from embryonic, fetal and adult derived material and more recently by overexpression of certain genes for the production of "induced pluripotent cells". Campbell believed all potential stem cell populations should be used for both basic and applied research which may provide basic scientific knowledge and lead to the development of cell therapies.^{[18][19][20][21]}

In 2008, he received theShaw Prize for Medicine and Life Sciences jointly with Ian Wilmut and Shinya Yamanaka.^[22] He was awarded the Pioneer Award from the International Embryo Transfer Society posthumously in 2015.^[23]

Campbell died on 5 October 2012, aged 58, after accidentally hanging himself in his bedroom at hisIngleby, Derbyshire home, whilst heavily intoxicated. It was determined at the inquest that he had been behaving erratically at the time and had no actual intention to kill himself; the verdict was adeath by misadventure.^[24][25] He was buried at Bretby Crematorium,Derbyshire.^[26] He is survived by his wife, Kathy, and two daughters, Claire and Lauren.

• 1954 births
• 2012 deaths
• 20th-century British biologists
• 20th-century British inventors
• 21st-century British biologists
• Academics of the University of Nottingham
• Accidental deaths in England
• Alcohol-related deaths in England
• Alumni of the University of London
• Alumni of the University of Sussex
• Cloning
• Deaths by hanging
• People from Perth, Scotland
• Scientists from Birmingham, West Midlands

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