Robert Charles Anderson, (born 1944) Director of the Great Migration Study Project, was educated as a biochemist and served in the United States Army in electronics intelligence. In 1972, he discovered his early New England ancestry and thereafter devoted his time and energies to genealogical research. He published his first genealogical article in 1976, and about the same time began to plan for what eventually became the Great Migration Study Project. In 1983, he received a Master’s degree in colonial American History from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Anderson was elected a Fellow of the American Society of Genealogists (ASG) in 1978 and has served as Secretary and President of that organization. He also published in the ASG magazine The Genealogist. He became a Contributing Editor of The American Genealogist in 1979, Associate Editor in 1985 and Co-editor in 1993. He has been an editorial consultant to The New England Historical and Genealogical Register since 1989.