Robert F. Anderson received a PhD (1981) in Chemical Oceanography from the WHOI-MIT Joint Program in Oceanography. He is a Ewing-Lamont Research Professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University where he teaches courses in Chemical Oceanography and on the Chemistry of Continental Waters.

He is a marine biogeochemist who exploits uranium and thorium-series radionuclides as tracers of the processes that supply and remove trace elements in the ocean, as well as processes that transport and transform trace elements within the ocean. In that context, he has served as one of the organizers in planning and implementing the GEOTRACES program, an international study of the marine biogeochemical cycles of trace elements and isotopes. He also studies the ocean carbon cycle and its sensitivity to global change, focusing on late-Pleistocene glacial cycles.