Robert Plunkett SJ (1752 – January 15, 1815) was an English Catholic priest and Jesuit missionary to the United States who became the first president of Georgetown College.

He entered the Society of Jesus in 1769, but left the order on August 21, 1773, after the promulgation of a papal brief suppressing the Jesuits worldwide, but before news of this brief reached him in the Low Countries.

[4] After his ordination, Plunkett became the chaplain to the Monastery of Our Lady of the Assumption in Brussels, in the Austrian Netherlands,[5] which housed a community of Benedictine nuns who had been exiled from England.

As a result of the Jesuits' fourth vow concerning missionary work, the permission of the Holy See was required as well, and Plunkett's request was forwarded to the Sacred Congregation de Propaganda Fide.

[5] On May 1, 1790,[7] Plunkett set sail for America from Texel, aboard a ship called The Brothers,[8] along with Charles Neale and a group of four Discalced Carmelite sisters from Hoogstraten who were going to found a convent in the United States.

[13] He laid to rest the concerns of the local ecclesiastical authorities, who learned of a rumor that the Carmelite sisters were nuns fleeing their monastery with the aid of the two priests.

[1] He had initially sought to name a distinguished English ex-Jesuit as the head of the college, such as Charles Plowden or Robert Molyneux, but they were unwilling to assume the position.

[16] A French Sulpician seminarian, Jean-Edouard de Mondésir, became the first professor at the college in October of that year, while still learning English from Plunkett.

[18] As a result of Carroll's letters to Catholic families across the country, Georgetown had a significantly more geographically diverse student body than other American colleges at the time.

Though living in Georgetown, he traveled regularly on horseback throughout Montgomery County, Maryland, where he was given charge of the congregations in Rock Creek, Rockville, Seneca, Barnesville, and Holland's River.