Donald Kennedy

Donald Kennedy (born August 18, 1931) is an American scientist, public administrator and academic.

Donald Kennedy was born in New York and educated at Harvard University (A.B.; Ph.D., Biology, 1956). He has spent most of his professional career at Stanford University, which he joined as a faculty member in 1960 and where he was chair of the Department of Biology from 1964–1972, then director of the Program in Human Biology from 1973-1977. Kennedy is on the board of directors of the Lucile and David Packard Foundation.

For 26 months he served as Commissioner of the United States Food and Drug Administration during the Carter Administration. Having been appointed by the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, Joseph Califano, in April 1977, in the next two-plus years Kennedy and the FDA dealt with issues such as the fallout from the attempt to ban saccharin and worked on provisions of the proposed Drug Regulation Reform Act of 1978.

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. From 2000 until 2008, he was editor-in-chief of Science, the prestigious weekly published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) (replaced by Bruce Alberts).

According to his Stanford biography, Kennedy's present research interests relate 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."

In 2010 he received Wonderfest's Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization.