Jonathan D. Sauer (1918-2008): Perspectives on his Life and Work in Latin America and Beyond

Abstract

Early Years Jonathan Deininger Sauer, Emeritus Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, died May 25, 2008 at the age of 89. He was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan on July 16, 1918 to Lorena S. Sauer and Carl O. Sauer, then a profes sor at the University of Michigan. Five years later, the Sauer family moved to Berkeley where Jonathan attended local schools and then went to the University of California from which he graduated in 1939 with a B.A. and honors in history. After UC Berkeley he entered the graduate program in geography at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. With World War II in full swing, Jonathan suspended his graduate work when he was drafted into the U.S. Army Air Forces and he became a weather specialist in the Penta gon. It was in Washington that he met Hilda Sievers, herself stationed at the Pentagon as a member of the Women's Army Corps. They married in 1946. Jonathan resumed grad uate work, but this time in St. Louis in order to study with Edgar Anderson (1897-1969), a brilliant geneticist with broad interests (Anderson 1952). The Henry Shaw School of Botany at Washington University was housed at the Missouri Botanical Garden, then as now, one of the major world centers for plant taxonomy. Anderson had gone to Berkeley in 1943 on a Guggenheim Fellowship and there he and Carl Sauer became good friends. That contact explains how J. Sauer met Anderson and why he wanted to study with him. In letters to Carl Sauer, Anderson described Jonathan as an exemplary graduate student.