Born and brought up in Newburgh, Fife, Anderson went on to study at St Andrews University, completing a theological training in Edinburgh. He served as minister of St Katherine’s parish, Newburgh from 1833, taking part in the Church of Scotland Disruption as a Moderate. The University of St Andrews awarded him Doctor of Divinity for his theological works.

Anderson was also an enthusiastic amateur archaeologist and geologist. He was the first to discover fossil fish at Dura Den. In 1838, immediately it was established, the Literary and Philosophical Society of St Andrews elected him as its first Honorary Member. Over the twenty years of his explorations he found several hundred specimens and wrote many articles and books on the subject, including the Monograph of Dura Den. He corresponded with the experts, escorting many of them around the site, and persuaded the British Association to fund further research there. Several species of fossil fish were named after him, and he was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society.

Anderson was apparently an amiable character of ‘gentlemanly bearing’ and could ‘make science pleasant by imparting to it the charm of poetic interest’. Much of his book The Course of Creation is devoted to the problems of reconciling geological evidence with the Bible. Anderson arrived at a compromise, believing that the Creation story was a symbolic account of much longer epochs of time throughout which God created all species. He died in Nice while convalescing from an illness.

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