Andrew Nathaniel Nelson was born in Great Falls, Montana, in 1893. He received his B.A. from Walla Walla College and his Ph.D. from the University of Washington. As a Seventh-Day Adventist missionary in Asia between 1918 and 1961, Dr. Nelson played a prominent role in the fields of education and language training. Throughout his life, Dr. Nelson remained devoted to the study of the Japanese language and the fundamentals of Chinese.