Nelson Annandale

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Nelson Annandale.

Thomas Nelson Annandale (Born 15 June 1876 at Edinburgh and died 10 April 1924 at Calcutta) was a Scottish zoologist and anthropologist.

Annandale went to India in 1904 as Deputy Superintendent of the Natural History Section of the Indian Museum. He was a deputy director at the Indian Museum and in 1907 he became its director, succeeding John Anderson (1833-1900). He had travelled widely before his career in India and with H. C. Robinson he had undertaken the Skeat Expedition to the northern part of the Malay Peninsula in 1899.^[1]

He started the Records and Memoirs of the Indian Museum journals and in 1916, he became the first director of the Zoological Survey of India that he helped found. He was associated with many scientists of his time. This change placed an official equality with botany and geology and made more funds available for expeditions to various parts of India. He was interested in aspects beyond systematics including ecology. His suggestion of a problem in anthropology to P. C. Mahalanobis led to the latters discovery of a technique that developed into the multivariate statistical techniques of today. He held the position of director until 1924 and was succeeded by Robert Beresford Seymour Sewell (1880-1964). He was president of the 1924 session of the Indian Science Congress.

The Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, with which he was closely associated during his service in India as Anthropological Secretary, Vice-President and as its President in 1923 instituted a triennial an Annandale Memorial Medal for contributions to anthropology in Asia. The first award was made to Dr Fritz Sarasin in 1928.