Donald Kennedy (1931–2020)

Donald Kennedy—public servant, university president, and former Science editor-in-chief—died on 21 April. He was 88. A born naturalist, broad intellectual, and leader, Don engaged in controversial areas as diverse as the safety of artificial sweeteners, the overuse of pesticides and antibiotics, the impacts of human population growth, the teaching of evolution, the philosophical basis for valuing nature, and academic duty. He served with brilliance, intense energy, and effectiveness. His death is a great loss to the United States and the world at this crucial moment in history. Born in New York City in 1931, Don received all of his degrees (bachelor's, master's, and Ph.D.) in biology from Harvard University. He taught at Syracuse University for 4 years and then moved in 1960 to Stanford University, to which he devoted 32 years of his career. After leaving the laboratory bench, he took leadership roles at the university, in government, and finally at the journal Science . In graduate school, Don explored the relation between brain and behavior. He devised a strategy for working on the simple nervous systems of invertebrate animals such as crayfish and lobsters—a choice that he liked to boast was superior to my (P.R.E.'s) choice of butterflies, in that Don could eat his specimens. He helped determine how restricted networks of neurons give rise to sensory perception and behavioral acts, such as swimming and flying. His presumption that the same rules of wiring neurons together apply to crayfish and humans has been justified time and again. Don's research program advanced principles that later became widespread and part of modern systems neuroscience. His anthropocentric colleagues, mostly in medical schools, resisted his paradigm, complaining that scientists should be studying “real animals.” His former student Ron Hoy reminisces that, in response, Don sardonically referred to his bottom-up methods based on invertebrates as the study of “virtual animals.” He showed that stimulating just one or a few command neurons produces a complex sequence of movements. His laboratory was also instrumental in cell and network visualization techniques, using fluorescent dyes to define the functional connectivity within behavioral circuits. In 1973, I (P.R.E.) and psychiatrist David Hamburg brought Don in to help organize Stanford's Program in Human Biology. Don soon took charge of the program and proceeded to use his uncommonly effective persuasive powers to convince me to teach for the program for almost a decade, despite my intention of staying only a few years. It was hard to say no to Don; he exuded genuine warmth, both with friends and upon first encounter, drawing people in with a light touch on the arm. Jeanne Kennedy, his first wife, recalls how “he could see the best in someone, who they really wanted to be … and make them feel as if they were that best version.” Don served as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration from 1977 to 1979 before returning to Stanford as provost and then becoming its eighth president from 1980 to 1992. He led the university's Centennial Campaign, which brought in nearly $1.3 billion, the largest sum ever raised for higher education at the time. His enduring investments strengthened undergraduate teaching and financial aid, overseas study, and public service—including the launch of the Bing Stanford in Washington Program, an undergraduate internship in the U.S. capital. Later, Don weathered a challenging disagreement with the federal government over research reimbursement. Stanford was ultimately vindicated, but the publicity took a heavy toll. In his professor days, Don was a legendary teacher and research mentor, inspiring large cohorts of undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs, who themselves became leaders in science. He continued his mentoring as university president. I (G.C.D.) will never forget his addressing my freshman class, asking plainly, “Do you feel completely out of place?” and contending, “Every one of you should be uncomfortable! That's what'll make you grow!” He extended an open invitation to students to join him on his 6 a.m. runs and share what was on their minds. He would give students advice such as “Great plan, but you'll never make a three-point shot standing right under the basket.” Don's interests ranged from the practical to the esoteric, but he always looked at the big picture. He wrote on wide-ranging subjects, from nuclear war and pandemics to “what we don't know.” Perhaps most unusually, in their book Humans, Nature, and Birds , he and coauthor Darryl Wheye explored the sweeping 30,000-year history of the depiction of birds in art. During his tenure as editor-in-chief of Science from 2000 to 2008, Don greatly improved its coverage of ecology, evolution, and conservation at a time of rapidly intensifying human impacts on the biosphere. In doing so, he helped move problems such as land transformation, biodiversity loss, disruption of the nitrogen cycle, climate change, and ocean acidification to the top of the scientific agenda. He had contagious enthusiasm and boundless curiosity about every field the journal covered, but he was particularly excited when a paper touched on one of his personal passions. One day he called me (P.R.E.) and said, “We've just gotten a manuscript reporting ivory-billed woodpeckers in Arkansas.” We started planning an expedition to see them, but the report of that now-extinct species turned out to be a false alarm, depriving us both of one final joint field adventure. It is sadly ironic that coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) killed Don. His grasp of the complex historical, demographic, environmental, epidemiological, economic, social, and political dimensions of pandemic risk was incomparable. He would have been on the front lines, advancing a coherent and effective response by the United States. Don's approach to every challenge was first and foremost based on science and evidence. He leavened this razor-sharp insight with a healthy sense of humor and humanity that earned him respect and admiration and made him beloved by those whose lives he touched.