Beauchamp serves as Professor of Philosophy and Senior Research Scholar, Kennedy Institute of Ethics. He was born in Austin, Texas. He took graduate degrees from Yale University and The Johns Hopkins University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1970. He then joined the faculty of the Philosophy Department at Georgetown University, and in the mid-70s accepted a joint appointment at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics. In 1976, he joined the staff of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, where he wrote the bulk of The Belmont Report (1978).

Dr. Beauchamp's research interests are in Hume and the history of modern philosophy and practical ethics, especially biomedical ethics and business ethics. Publications include the following co-authored works: Hume and the Problem of Causation (Oxford 1981), Principles of Biomedical Ethics (Oxford, 1979, 4th edn. 1994), A History and Theory of Informed Consent (Oxford, 1986), and Philosophical Ethics (McGraw-Hill, 1982; Second Edition, 1991). Publications also include a number of edited and coedited anthologies and over 100 scholarly articles in journals and books.

Dr. Beauchamp is the General Editor--with David Fate Norton and M. A. Stewart--of The Critical Edition of the Works of David Hume, Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press. He is also the editor of an electronic edition called HUMETEXT, a complete electronic edition of Hume's philosophical, political, and literary works. (Coeditor: David Fate Norton.)