He was born on May 19, 1920, in South Dakota, to parents Adolf and Mary E. (Slaughter) Anderson.
Anderson's father died when he was eight, and he was later sent to live with an aunt in Belle Fourche, South Dakota, where he attended high school.
Anderson earned his bachelor's degree in 1942 and served in the United States Army Air Forces between January 1943 and August 1945.
[1][2] He began teaching at his alma mater in 1951, and was appointed Steenbock Professor of Biomolecular Structure in 1981.
Over the course of his career, Anderson won the Claude S. Hudson Award (1984), and served as editor of the journal Carbohydrate Research.