Truman G. Yuncker was born in Carson City, Michigan, March 20, 1891 and died in Greencastle, Indiana January 8, 1964. He married Ethel B. Clafin in 1915, and they had two children, Betty-Jane and Barbara. A graduate of Michigan State University, the University of Nebraska and the University of Illinois, and a veteran of World War I, Yunker headed the botany and bacteriology department at DePauw (1921-1956). He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1953, a Fulbright Scholarship in 1957, and was considered the world's leading authority on piperaceae, an herb.