Saunders was born on in
Christchurch,
New Zealand. He received his B.Sc. in mathematics from
University of Canterbury in 1965 and worked for two years as a scientific officer at the
Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) in New Zealand. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University in 1972, under the supervision of
Gene Golub. Saunders spent another two years at his old position with DSIR before joining the Systems Optimization Laboratory (SOL) in the Operations Research department at Stanford University. He was promoted to his current position in 1987 and made a faculty member in the Scientific Computing and Computational Mathematics (SCCM). He has authored over 100 scientific papers on a variety of topics, including many with his colleagues Philip Gill, Walter Murray, and
Margaret Wright. == Honors and awards ==