Don Lynn Anderson was an American geophysicist who made significant contributions to the understanding of the origin, evolution, structure, and composition of Earth and other planets. Don Lynn Anderson was born in 1933 in Frederick, Maryland. He graduated from Baltimore Polytechnic Institute then attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) where he earned a Bachelor of Science in geology and geophysics in 1955. He then worked in the oil industry in California, Montana and Wyoming, and served in the Air Force in Massachusetts and Thule, Greenland before moving to California, where he received a Ph.D. in geophysics and mathematics at Caltech in 1962. Anderson received many honors in his field, including, in 1998, a National Medal of Science. The award cited him for his "immeasurable influence on the field of earth sciences over the past three decades." He died on December 2, 2014 in Cambria, California, United States.