Angelo Bertelli, the first of Notre Dame's seven Heisman Trophy winners and its first T-formation quarterback, died Saturday at his home in Clifton, N.J. He was 78.

The cause was brain cancer, his son Michael said.

When Bertelli entered Notre Dame in 1940, he was 6 feet 1 inch and 173 pounds, a skinny but highly regarded tailback in the single-wing formation used by most college teams. Elmer Layden, Notre Dame's coach, used the box offense perfected by his coach, the legendary Knute Rockne.

But when Layden left to become commissioner of the National Football League, Notre Dame's new coach, Frank Leahy, was impressed by Bertelli's passing talents and made major changes.

''I was a fourth-string tailback on the freshman team and a terrible runner,'' Bertelli recalled, ''and there were three varsity tailbacks coming back the next year. Then Leahy became our coach. He remembered what he had had at Boston College, a passing quarterback in Charlie O'Rourke, and I went from seventh string to first string overnight.''