Firm But Gentle Helmsman

As a young biology professor in 1960, Donald Kennedy left a tenured job at Syracuse University for an untenured one at Stanford. "A lot of people thought I was crazy," he recalls. But at the hot, fast-evolving Palo Alto institution, he explains, "you got the sense that anything was possible." Last week in the elegant corner office of University President Donald Kennedy, it seemed that anything had indeed been possible, and would continue to be so. "I love it," exults Kennedy, 56, about the sprawling campus and his action-packed position. "I grew up here scientifically."

Born in New York City and graduated from outdoorsy Dublin School in New Hampshire ("We did a lot of woodcutting"), Kennedy entered Harvard to study English literature. But he switched to biology and stayed on for a Ph.D., meanwhile coaching the Harvard ski team. In contrast to today's microbiologists, Kennedy says, he took the old-fashioned "butterfly route" in biology. He nonetheless rocketed up the academic ladder at Syracuse and | then Stanford, where he became provost in 1979. En route he detoured to Washington, first as a science adviser to Gerald Ford, then as Food and Drug Administration commissioner under Jimmy Carter. In the latter role, he was a strong public-interest spokesman, opposing use of ozone-damaging fluorocarbon sprays and favoring regulation of such cancer-linked substances as saccharin and sodium nitrate.

When Stanford tapped him as president in 1980, he continued to take on tough issues, pushing the hiring of women and minority professors. He joined other university presidents in exploring possible ethical conflicts in commercially sponsored research and refusing government research contracts with restrictive clauses about publication. He has navigated such shoals by combining a firm hand with a collegial deference to his faculty that has spared him much of the president-bashing common to academe.

Personally, Kennedy has endured gossip preceding his marriage last fall to Stanford Lawyer Robin Hamill, 41. He wed her two months after divorcing his wife of 34 years and the mother of his two children. Professionally, he faces a continuing struggle to close the chasm between Stanford's powerful scientific-technical community and its humanities disciplines. For all his accomplishments, Kennedy is modest about his role at the university: "I can steer it a bit, but I couldn't redirect it if I wanted to." Yet all signs are that the Kennedy touch will keep the tight ship that is Stanford moving handsomely forward.