Norman Robert Campbell, the English physicist and philosopher of science, was educated at Eton. From Eton he went as a scholar to Trinity College, Cambridge, and became a fellow there in 1904. From 1903 to 1910 he also worked as a research assistant at the Cavendish Laboratory, whose director, the celebrated J. J. Thomson, became the most important inspiration of his scientific work. In 1913 he became an honorary fellow for research in physics at Leeds University, but he left this post after the war and from 1919 to 1944 was a member of the research staff of the General Electric Company.

The writers who seem to have influenced him most are Ernst Mach and Henri Poincaré, apart from classical authors such as William Whewell, John Stuart Mill, and W. S. Jevons. On the other hand, such philosophers as Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead came too late...