Born in Edinburgh. Educated at Rugby School and Balliol College, Oxford, graduating in 1898. In 1899 he joined the Skeat Expedition to the Malay Archipelago, and between 1901 and 1903 he revisited that country on more than one occasion with H.C. Robinson. These were the first of many foreign journeys which took him to Iceland, Palestine, China, Japan, Morocco and elsewhere. From 1902-4 he was a Research Fellow in Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, where he was awarded a D.Sc. in 1905. He went to India in 1904 as Deputy Superintendent of the Indian Museum in Calcutta. In 1907 he was promoted to Superintendent, in 1923 he was made President of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1923, and in 1924 President of the Zoological Section of the Indian Science Congress. He remained in India until his death, being associated particularly with that country’s Zoological Survey.
Annandale was a man of wide ranging knowledge and ability, the writer of his obituary in Rec.Ind.Museum, XXVII (1), 1925, 1-28, noting that 'he worked with remarkable speed and seemed endowed with a special instinct for taxonomic differences, recognising species almost at a glance but systematic work in its narrowest sense he esteemed but little ... it was his ambition to grapple with larger problems'. This ambition led him to write extensively on many subjects from freshwater sponges to Malayan weaponry, from the dynastic genius of Siam to the growth rate of Barnacles, and from limbless skinks to island life in the Faroes. Amongst this large number of books and articles are thirty two publications on insects of which several concern beetles. These included: an Annotated List of the Asiatic Beetles in the Collection of the Indian Museum. Cicindelinae,(19O9, with W. Horn); ‘The life history of an aquatic weevil’, Journal Asiatic Society of Bengal, 11, 1906, 105-7 (with C.A. Paiva); and ‘The Cicindelid beetles of Barkuda Island’, Rec. Ind. Museum, XXII, 1921, 335-7 (with C. Dover).
Although Annandale's own work on beetles was not very great, his influence on the study of Coleoptera in India was considerable. As head of the Museum he gave great help and encouragement to entomologists, and there is hardly a book about Indian insects written in the early part of this century which does not mention his name. Furthermore, he established the Records and Memoirs of the Museum which acted as vehicles for entomological publications. Most importantly, he was responsible for seeing through the establishment of the Zoological Survey of India in 1916, of which he was appointed first Director, and under whose auspices the FBI series was continued.
Smith (1986) records that there are several collections of insects at Oxford, including material from Iceland, the Faroe Islands and the Siamese States (collected with H.C. Robinson) but does not mention Coleoptera. Harvey et.al.(1996) record that a MS notebook titled Annandale Coll[ection]: Ruwenzori Coll. Including notes about material collected on the Ruwenzori (Uganda) Expedition 1905-06 and unpublished notes and descriptions of new species, is in the NHM. (MD 7.01)