Carmen C. Velasquez

Carmen Camacho was born on 7 August 1913 in Bayambang, Pangasinan, and took her zoology degree at the University of the Philippines in 1934. A Barbour scholarship took her to the University of Michigan, where the helminthologist George R. La Rue shaped her interests and she earned a master's in zoology in 1937; back at the University of the Philippines she taught zoology and in 1954 became the first person to receive a doctorate in parasitology there, with a thesis on the spread and resistance of Ascaris eggs. She held Guggenheim Fellowships in 1957–58 and 1963.

Specialising in the parasites of Philippine tropical fish and in the taxonomy of digenetic trematodes, she discovered 32 new species and a genus, published more than seventy papers on the life cycles of parasitic worms of zoonotic importance, and was the first to describe the nematode Capillaria philippinensis, the cause of intestinal capillariasis in humans. She chaired the zoology department at UP Diliman from 1973 to 1976, was named a National Scientist of the Philippines in 1983 and died on 16 October 1994.

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Facts in this profile are drawn from the Wikipedia article(s) linked below, consulted on 21 September 2026; the text is original. Wikipedia (English)

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