Donald Kennedy (August 18, 1931 – April 21, 2020, COVID19) was an American scientist, public administrator, and academic.

He served as Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (1977–79), President of Stanford University (1980–92), and Editor-in-Chief of Science (2000–08). Following this, he was named president emeritus of Stanford University; Bing Professor of Environmental Science and Policy, emeritus; and senior fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Spouses

• Jeanne Kennedy
• Robin Hamill

Early life and education

Donald Kennedy was born in New York City on August 18, 1931, and attended Harvard University, where he received an A.B., M.S., and Ph.D., Biology, in 1956. His doctoral dissertation was titled Studies on the Frog Electroretinogram.

After stepping down from the FDA in June 1979, Kennedy returned to Stanford, where he served as provost. In 1980 he became president of Stanford University and served in that position until 1992. While president, he inaugurated overseas campuses in Kyoto, Japan, and Oxford, England. He also initiated the Institute for International Studies, the Haas Public Service Center and the Stanford-in-Washington campus. One of his focuses was on improving the quality of undergraduate education. In the mid-1980s, he led a $1.1 billion fundraising effort to improve the facilities of the university, and the total raised was $1.2 billion. In 1990 Kennedy hosted Mikhail Gorbachev on an international visit to Stanford. Over his tenure, Kennedy fostered the growth of the university’s endowment to $2 billion, which was the fifth-largest in the United States. He also led Stanford to divest all investments in South Africa during Apartheid after student protests.[16] He also changed the “Western Culture" credit requirements to “Cultures, Ideas, and Values” in an attempt to encompass non-Western cultures.

Kennedy resigned in 1992 following congressional hearings over whether the university improperly billed the government for research expense as part of the Stanford Indirect Costs Controversy, which included billing for widening his bed and for the purchase of antiques for his home. The issue was settled out of court, and led to no charges. According to The New York Times, "Stanford University and the Navy … settled [the] fraud case involving research expenses, with the university repaying a small fraction of the Navy's original claim and the Navy saying that an investigation had found no wrongdoing by the university.” Following his presidency, Kennedy wrote a memoir entitled A Place in the Sun: A Memoir.

He remained at Stanford after resigning from the presidency. From 2000 until 2008, he was editor-in-chief of Science, the weekly published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2010, he received Wonderfest's Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization. Kennedy was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, the American Philosophical Society, and the California Academy of Sciences. According to his Stanford biography, Kennedy's research interests related to "policy on such trans-boundary environmental problems as: major land-use changes; economically-driven alterations in agricultural practice; global climate change; beyond coal; and alternative energy sources.". He was president emeritus of Stanford University, Bing Professor of Environmental Science and Policy, and emeritus and senior fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies by courtesy.

Death

Kennedy had a stroke in 2015, and moved to Gordon Manor, a residential care home located in Redwood City, California, in 2018. He died there on April 21, 2020, of coronavirus disease 2019, aged 88.