John W. Saunders Jr. (November 12, 1919-December 26, 2015) was an American scientist whose research in the field of developmental biology and zoology played an integral part in helping to understand how various vertebrate limbs develop. Saunders researched the vertebrate limb and studied the apical ectodermal ridge (AER). This research was critical in recognizing growth factors that are secreted from the AER and are important in assisting the pattern of developing vertebrate limbs.
Personal life
John W. Saunders Jr. was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma, on November 12, 1919. Saunders grew up very poor since his father, who worked as a barber, had his barbershop burned down in a fire. To support his family, he caddied at a golf course, and at 13, he worked at a restaurant for six days a week from 4 pm - 10 pm. He gave the money he earned to his family in order to help support them and he kept this job throughout high school. The lack of money and available jobs due to the Great Depression made it hard for Saunders and his family to make end meets during his childhood, and World War II forced him to put his graduate education on hold to serve his country in the US Navy.
Saunders first met his wife, Lilyan C. Saunders, in the 1930s while taking a histology class at the University of Oklahoma. At the time, Lilyan was a graduate student who taught the histology course. They were married for 69 years and had five children. Additionally, he also had a sister named Virginia Lavarine. His son, William, and grandson, Danny Brown, died before him and his wife Lilyan also died in 2011. Saunders died on December 26, 2015, in Falmouth, Massachusetts.
Education and career
Saunders' high school was very small, and he only had six students in his graduating class. Even while working for six hours a day, six days a week, he was able to graduate high school with more than a 98 average in his classes. Saunders found it tough to get a job since the effects of the Great Depression were still present in Oklahoma at the time. Because of this, he struggled to make money so that he could attend junior college and pursue a higher education. Despite his mother and father not being educated past second and seventh grade, respectively, they both encouraged and pushed him to get an education. With the help of his mother, he enrolled in Muskogee Junior College. Additionally, he was also able to participate in a federal program that allowed students to work for the junior college doing various jobs and be paid twenty cents per hour for their work. At Muskogee Junior College, Saunders' education was mainly focused on English and public speaking, which he credits with contributing to his writing and speaking success later in his career. Saunders also studied French while in junior college and he had a classmate, whose father was an Oklahoma legislature senator, that was failing the class. Since Saunders excelled at French, the classmate's father hired him to tutor his son in French. The senator also told Saunders that if he helped his son pass the French course, then he would help Saunders pursue a higher education and get into a college. The senator helped Saunders get into the University of Oklahoma in 1936. He was also able to get Saunders a job working at the State Hospital in Norman during the school year and the State Highway Department in the summer so that he could earn money while attending college.
While attending the University of Oklahoma, Saunders's advisor was Professor Audie Richards. At the time, Richards was the chairman of the Department of Zoology at the University of Oklahoma, and he was also a former doctoral student of Princeton Professor Edwin Grant Conklin. Richards signed Saunders up to be a zoology major and he also minored in botany. Saunders started his master's degree in 1940 at the University of Oklahoma's zoology department where he wrote his thesis titled "Aberrant Mitosis in the Amnion of the Guinea Pig". Saunders then went on to graduate school at Johns Hopkins University in 1941, where he studied the AER in chick embryos. He received his doctorate in zoology from Johns Hopkins in 1948. From 1943 to 1946, Saunders served as an officer in the US Navy during World War II, during which he could not attend school. During his time in the US Navy, he served as a lieutenant on the USS Rocky Mount. His ship was a part of nine island-hopping invasions in the Pacific Ocean and he ended up in Shanghai, China, when the war ended.