Erik W Anthon was born and raised in Denmark. He received his education at the University of Copenhagen, and served in the Danish Navy. In 1950, he emigrated to the United States and became an optical engineer. He joined the Optical Coating Laboratory in Santa Rosa, California in 1969.

Anthon received OSA’s David Richardson Medal in 1989 “for his creative solutions to difficult technical problems evidenced by photometers, scatterometers, and interferometers that have significantly advanced the state of the art of optical instrumentation.” He was elected a Fellow of OSA in 1990.