Philip Campbell

Editor in science publishing

Philip Campbell has spent most of his career as a professional editor in science publishing. After post-doctoral research in upper-atmospheric physics at the University of Leicester, he became Physical Sciences Editor at Nature, and then, in 1988, the founding Editor-in-Chief of Physics World at the UK’s Institute of Physics. In 1995 he was appointed Editor-in-Chief of Nature. In 2018 he changed roles to become the Editor-in-Chief of Nature‘s publisher Springer Nature, which also publishes many scholarly books and academic journals.

He retired from science publishing in 2023, and now undertakes advisory roles in the research landscape. He was a trustee of Cancer Research UK and a founding trustee and then Chair (2015-19) of the charity MQ Mental Health Research. He was knighted for services to science in 2015. In 2019 he was given the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Association of British Science Writers. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2024. He was a former patron of the Rationalist Association before it merged with Humanists UK in 2025.