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Albert R. Jonsen was an influential scholar and founder of the field of bioethics. Jonsen was born in San Francisco, California in April, 1931. After joining the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) he was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1962. Jonsen received a doctorate in religious studies from Yale in 1967. He served as the 23rd President of the University of San Francisco from 1969 to 1972, and was involved with bioethics work at the UCSF School of Medicine. From 1974 to 1978, Jonsen served on the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, and in 1980, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine. He was a co-founder of the Society for Clinical Ethics (SBC), which eventually merged with other ethics organizations to become the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH).

Jonsen served as the chair of the University of Washington Department of Medical History and Ethics (now Bioethics and Humanities) from 1987 to 1999 and was an emeritus professor. As a founding member of bioethics, Jonsen wrote a number of influential texts in the field such as The Birth of Bioethics (1998) and was a coauthor of “The Belmont Report” (1978) and Clinical Ethics (1982). After his retirement from the University of Washington in 2003, Jonsen co-founded the Program in Medicine and Human Values at Sutter Health's California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. Jonsen died on October 21st, 2020.