*John F. Enders, who during nearly 50 years as a Harvard scientist won wide acclaim and a Nobel prize for helping to develop vaccines against polio, measles and mumps, died Sunday night at his summer home in Waterford, Conn. He was 88 years old.

Enders, appointed to a prestigious University professorship in 1962 and active in research circles through the late 1970s, shared the 1954 Nobel Prize in Medicine for developing techniques to cultivate viruses in test tubes.

The advance was critical for those seeking to develop vaccines, and Enders led a Harvard research team in successfully growing viruses for polio, measles, rubella and mumps in the tissue cultures, which thrived in the test tube environments.

In addition to the Nobel Prize, Enders earned a variety of citations from the scientific community. He won the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963, was one of several "Men of the Year" named by Time Magazine in 1961 and received honorary degrees from nearly a dozen schools, including Harvard and Yale.

Born in 1897, in West Hartford, Conn., Enders graduated from Yale in 1920. In 1922, he received a master's degree in English from Harvard, switched to science upon meeting a Harvard immunology professor and joined the Harvard Medical School faculty after receiving his Ph. D in 1930.

Slow Rise

Enders had an unusually slow ascent up Harvard's academic ladder. He was an associate professor of bacteriology and immunology for 12 years, until 1956, when he became a full professor. He did much of his work in laboratories at Harvard-affiliated Children's Hospital Medical Center, where he was chief of the research division of infectious diseases.

Besides his wife Carolyn, Enders leaves a daughter, Sarah Steffian of Baltimore, and two grandchildren.

A funeral service is scheduled for this afternoon in West Hartford, Conn. The date for a Harvard memorial service has not yet been set.