Donald Kennedy

Who is Donald Kennedy?

Donald Kennedy is an American scientist, public administrator and academic. He served as Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, President of Stanford University, and Editor-in-Chief of Science Magazine. He was forced to resign as president of Stanford University in 1992 in the wake of a scandal involving expenses charged to the federal government.

Donald Kennedy was born in New York and educated at Harvard University. 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.