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Francis Andersen

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Biography

Francis Ian Andersen was born in Warwick, Queensland, Australia. In his final high school examinations in 1942, he topped the state of Queensland, winning an Open Scholarship to the University of Queensland. He received a Bachelor of Science from the University of Queensland in Chemistry in 1947. He accepted a position as Demonstrator in Chemistry at the University of Melbourne, where he taught until 1953. He received a Master of Science in Physical Chemistry in 1951, and a Bachelor of Arts in Russian in 1955, both from the University of Melbourne.

In 1952 he married Lois Garrett, a medical doctor. They had five children: John (born 1954), David (born 1956), Martin (born 1958), Nedra (born 1961), and Kathryn (born 1965).

While he was undertaking a postgraduate degree in chemistry at the University of Melbourne, he was attracted into the field of biblical studies by Stuart Barton Babbage, the principal of Ridley College, an Anglican theological college in Melbourne, who persuaded him to join the staff there. In 1957 he received a Fulbright Scholarship to study at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, United States under William F. Albright. He received a PhD with a dissertation entitled "Studies in Hebrew Syntax".

In 1960 he returned to Ridley College as Vice-Principal. In 1963 he accepted an appointment as Professor of Old Testament at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, in Berkeley, California. In 1973 he became Warden of the College of Saint John the Evangelist in Auckland, New Zealand. A year later, he returned to Australia. From 1974-1975 he was Exchange Professor at the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In 1975 he became Associate Professor of History at Macquarie University, in North Ryde, New South Wales, where he taught until 1980. In 1981 he became Professor of Studies in Religion at the University of Queensland, in St Lucia, Queensland.

In 1988 he returned to the United States, where he taught at New College for Advanced Christian Studies, in Berkeley California until 1993. He subsequently became David Allan Hubbard Professor of Old Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary, in Pasadena, California from 1994 to 1997. He later lived in Melbourne, Australia.

His wife Lois died in 2010. In 2015 he married Margaret Johnson nee Beazley. He died on 13 May 2020 at the age of 94.

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