Anderson was born of Estonian-Jewish immigrants in a working-class area of
Newcastle upon Tyne, and educated at Rutherford College before winning a scholarship to attend
Durham University's Medical School. He served in the
Royal Army Medical Corps during the Second World War. Anderson won worldwide recognition for his work on the
plasmids that render the bacteria responsible for typhoid fever and bacterial food poisoning insensitive to antibiotics. Anderson was director of the
Enteric Reference Laboratory of the
Public Health Laboratory Service, between 1954 and 1978. He was made a fellow of the
Royal Society in 1968 and appointed a CBE in 1976. He died in London at the age of 94. ==External links==