ASHINGTON, Aug. 3—Philip L. Graham, president and chief executive officer of The Washington Post and chairman of the board of Newsweek, died of a gunshot wound at his farm near Marshall, Va. today.

Both the investigating sheriff and a spokesman for The Post announced that Mr. Graham had killed himself with a 28-gauge shotgun. His body was found in a bathroom about 1 P.M.

Mr. Graham’s wife, Katharine E. Graham, daughter of the late Eugene Meyer, long-time owner of The Post, was sleeping in another part of the house when the shot was heard, Alfred Friendly, managing editor of The Post, reported.

Mr. Graham, 48 years old, had been in ill health for some time. Mr. Friendly said that the newspaper executive had been a patient at Chestnut Lodge, at Rockville, Md., until a few days ago.

Chestnut Lodge is a leading psychiatric hospital. Mr. Graham had been there six weeks.

Mr. Graham, a lawyer by profession, was prominent in many activities in Washington. He was a personal friend of President Kennedy.

Report by Coroner

Sheriff S. S. Hall Jr. of Fauquier County, whose office is at Warrenton, Va., said that Dr. James L. Dellinger, county coroner, had ruled the death a suicide.

Sheriff Hall said that one of his investigators responded to a telephone call from the Graham farm around 1 P.M. According to the sheriff’s report, Mr. Graham had propped the shotgun in a corner of the bathroom, placed the muzzle against his head and pulled the trigger with his hand. The body fell into the bathtub, he said.

The body was taken to the Royston Funeral Home in Marshall, Va. The Washington Post issued the following statement:

“Mr. Graham took his own life by shooting himself. He had been a patient at Chestnut Lodge of Rockville for about six weeks and was on a day’s outing with his wife at their farm.”

Mr. Graham is survived by his wife, a daughter, Elizabeth, 19; and three sons, Donald 18; William, 14, and Stephen, 10.

Friend of the President

Philip Leslie Graham, a tall, bespectacled, scholarly looking man, was an intimate friend of Vice President Johnson and a friend of President Kennedy. It has been said that he helped arrange the Kennedy-Johnson ticket in 1960.

Mr. Graham began his career as a lawyer who showed promise for a brilliant future, and ended as the president of a flourishing publishing and broadcasting company.

As president of the Washington Post Company, he controlled several subsidiaries, including three magazines, Newsweek, Art News, and Portfolio, radio and television stations WTOP in Washington and television station WJXT in Jacksonville, Fla.

The Washington Post also operates, jointly with The Los Angeles Times, a news service that supplies clients with stories from the domestic and foreign bureaus of both newspapers.

Mr. Graham also served the Kennedy Administration as the chairman of the President’s 13-member committee to establish the Communications Satellite Corporation which will own and operate a world-wide space communications system.

Resigned from Committee

Last February, Mr. Graham resigned from the group, just before the Corporation’s charter was issued. Ill health was given as the reason for his resignation.

Mr. Graham was born on July 18, 1915, in Terry, S.D. His father, Ernest R. Graham, was then a mining engineer. His mother, the former Florence Morris, had been a schoolteacher in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

In 1921, the family moved to Florida, where Mr. Graham’s father became supervisor of an experimental sugar plantation in Dade County. The experiment failed, but the elder Graham emerged with a large tract of land that became highly valuable during the later growth of the city of Miami.

Mr. Graham was graduated from Miami High School, and then graduated from the University of Florida in 1936, with a bachelor of arts degree in economics. As an undergraduate, he was a debater and a polo player.

He went on to the Harvard University Law School, where he was editor of the Law Review and earned a magna cum laude degree. In 1939-40 he was law clerk to Justice Stanley M. Reed of the Supreme Court, and the following year he was clerk to Justice Felix Frankfurter.

In 1942 he entered the Army Air Corps as a private and in 1945 he emerged as a major attached to the intelligence staff of the Far East Air Force.

In 1940, he was married to Katharine Meyer, the daughter of the late Eugene Meyer, the owner of The Washington Post.

When he was discharged from the Army, Mr. Meyer asked Mr. Graham to become associate publisher of the then unprosperous newspaper. In 1946, he became publisher.

At that time the once shaky newspaper had just begun to show a profit, but its growth potential remained doubtful because of keen competition from The Washington Times-Herald in the morning field.

Bought Rival Paper

That picture changed in 1954, when the late Col. Robert R. McCormick, who controlled The Times- Herald, agreed to sell his paper in Washington to Mr. Meyer. The deal gave the merged paper a monopoly in the morning field.

After that, the Post boomed. Its circulation, which now is over 400,000 daily and 480,000 on Sundays, went up sharply. It built up an editorial policy that is considered to be one of the most thoughtful in American journalism, and a news staff that is one of the most respected in Washington.

During this period, Mr. Graham not only handled the business side of the newspaper’s operations, but was the guiding spirit of the paper’s editorial policy as well. This policy leaned toward the Democrats, although the paper did not endorse either Presidential candidate in 1960.

In 1961, the Post company, under Mr. Graham’s leadership, purchased the controlling stock interest in Newsweek from the Vincent Astor Foundation. When the deal was closed, Mr. Graham wrote a personal check for $2,000,000, as a down payment on the $8,985,000 purchase price.

Bought Other Magazines

In the following year the Washington Post Company again expanded into the magazine field by buying Art News, the most widely read monthly in the art field, and Portfolio, a hard-cover art quarterly, from Albert M. Frankfurter.

Early this year, Mr. Graham attempted to take a hand in settling the New York newspaper strike. He informed Mayor Wagner that Bertram A. Powers, the president of New York Typographical Union Local No. 6, was willing to reach a settlement, and Mr. Graham offered to join the negotiations. However, the New York City newspaper publishers objected to his taking part.

In social and political Washington, Mr. Graham was widely known as a man of influence. He was a friend, adviser and confidant to a broad spectrum of Senators, Representatives, ambassadors, newspapermen and aspiring hostesses.

He played golf in the 90’s, appeared regularly on the dinner circuit, took his vermouth on the rocks, and avoided mass receptions. He was known as a stanch member of Athletics Anonymous, an informal group dedicated to avoiding strenuous exercise.

Philip L Graham