UW-Madison Alum To Receive Nobel Prize

A University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate is among the three Nobel Prize recipients in Medicine or Physiology announced on Monday.

William C. Campbell is a research fellow emeritus at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, known for his work developing treatments for parasitic diseases. Campbell, who is now 85, grew up in Ireland, before coming UW-Madison in 1957 to earn his doctorate. He later spent upwards of three decades working with the Merck pharmaceutical company.

In an interview provided by the Nobel Foundation, Campbell said he received the phone call about the prize in the middle of the night.

“The first thing I said was, ‘You must be kidding,’” he said.

Along with scientist Satoshi Omura, Campbell is known for developing a drug called Avermectin — derivatives of which have been used to treat river blindness, a skin and eye infection that can cause blindness, and lymphatic filariasis, a widespread disease that causes swelling of limbs and genitals.

In an interview provided by the Nobel Foundation, Campbell said many people in Africa and Asia have fled fertile farmland because of parasitic diseases. He said the proliferation of drugs to treat such diseases “enables people to repopulate areas that have been abandoned.”

Campbell will split the $960,000 award with Omura and Tu Youyou, a Chinese laureate who discovered a drug that reduces mortality rates for malaria.

Nobel Prize winners in physics, chemistry and peace will also be announced this week. Meanwhile, Campbell joins a list of 20 other Wisconsin Badgers who have also received the Nobel Prize.