| 1 | Name: | Dr. Donald Kennedy | |
| Institution: | Stanford University | ||
| Year Elected: | 1976 | ||
| Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 208. Plant Sciences | ||
| Residency: | Resident | ||
| Living? : | Deceased | ||
| Birth Date: | 1931 | ||
| Death Date: | April 21, 2020 | ||
Donald Kennedy was a Professor of Environmental Science and President of Stanford University. He received AB and Ph.D. degrees in biology from Harvard University. His research interests were originally in animal behavior and neurobiology - in particular, the mechanisms by which animals generate and control patterned motor output. His research group explored the relationship between central "commands" and sensory feedback in the control of locomotion, escape, and other behaviors in invertebrates. Among the issues considered were how environmental variables that could not be "anticipated" by the animal's genetic endowment could be compensated in fixed behavioral patterns and whether certain circuit arrangements for a given class of motor output were favored in different evolutionary outcomes. In 1977 Dr. Kennedy took leave from Stanford to serve as Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for two and a half years. This followed an increasing academic interest on his part in regulatory policy regarding health and the environment. Kennedy had already chaired the National Academy of Sciences study on alternatives to pesticide use and participated in the World Food and Nutrition Study. Following his return to Stanford in 1979, Dr. Kennedy served for a year as Provost and for twelve years as President, a time marked by renewed attention to undergraduate education and student commitment to public service, and successful completion of the largest capital campaign in the history of higher education. During that time Dr. Kennedy continued to work on health and environmental policy issues, as a member of the Board of Directors of the Health Effects Institute (a non-profit organization devoted to mobile source emissions), Clean Sites, Inc. (a similar organization devoted to toxic waste cleanup), and the California Nature Conservancy. His research program toward the end of his career, conducted partially through the Institute for International Studies, consisted of interdisciplinary studies on the development of policies regarding such trans-boundary environmental problems as: major land-use changes; economically-driven alterations in agricultural practice; global climate change; and the development of regulatory policies. He co-directed the Environmental Studies Program in the Institute for International Studies, and oversaw the introduction of the environmental policy quarter at Stanford's center in Washington, DC in 1993. Dr. Kennedy was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Donald Kennedy died April 21, 2020 in Redwood City, California at the age of 88. | |||