Born 16 March 1911, the son of N Campbell, of Kauwhata, Palmerston North, New Zealand, he was educated at Newbury School and Palmerston North Boys High School, and at the Otago Medical School, Dunedin, where he qualified in 1936. After serving as house surgeon at Wellington Hospital he came to England for postgraduate study in 1938, travelling as ship's surgeon in the Empire Star. He held appointments at the Dreadnought Hospital, Greenwich, the British Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith, and the Weir Hospital, Balham. On the outbreak of war in 1939 he was posted under the emergency medical service to Lambeth Hospital and later to St James's Hospital, Balham, where he served during the air-raids of 1940-41. He took the Fellowship, though not previously a member of the College, in 1941. While in England he was commissioned in the New Zealand Medical Corps and posted to the Middle East. He died on active service in the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force base camp in Egypt on 2 March 1943.