Edmund Pellegrino

Edmund Daniel Pellegrino (June 22, 1920 – June 13, 2013) was an American bioethicist and academic who served as the 11th president of The Catholic University of America (CUA) from 1978 to 1982. For 35 years, Pellegrino was a distinguished professor of medicine and medical ethics and the Director of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University. Pellegrino was an expert both in clinical bioethics, and in the field of medicine and the humanities, specifically, the teaching of humanities in medical school, which he helped pioneer). He was the second layman to hold the position of President of Catholic University.

He was the Chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics, under the 43rd U.S. President, George W. Bush, and was the founder of the Edmund D. Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics (renamed in his honor in 2013) at Georgetown University.