HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES

J.L. Sanders, Former Structural Mechanics Professor, Dies at 74

Photo by Jon Chase

J. Lyell Sanders Jr., Gordon McKay Professor of Structural Mechanics Emeritus, died Oct. 7 at the age of 74. He died at his home in Sudbury.

Sanders was born in Highland, Wis., and raised in Illinois and Indiana.

He received an aeronautical engineering degree from Purdue University in 1945. He earned a master's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and, in 1954, a doctorate in applied mathematics from Brown University.

Sanders began his 38-year Harvard career as a visiting lecturer in 1957. In 1964, he was named Gordon McKay Professor of Structural Mechanics. He did research in the field of thin shell theory and plasticity, and authored many books on aircraft and missile structures and the plasticity of metals.

He was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and the American Academy of Mechanics.

He leaves his wife of 38 years, Mary Jane (Wade); two daughters, Alice of Framingham and Jeanne of Maryland; a son, William, of New Hampshire; a sister, Dorothy Floyd of Indiana; a stepbrother, William Ullrick of New Hampshire; and four grandchildren.