Andrew Combe was born in Edinburgh, the son of George Combe, a brewer. He was educated at Edinburgh High School and attended Latin and Greek classes at the University of Edinburgh. At the age of fifteen he began a three-year apprenticeship with an Edinburgh surgeon and attended lectures in anatomy and chemistry. He became a Licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1817 and subsequently studied in Paris under Dupuytren and Spurzheim. A prominent phrenologist, he founded the Edinburgh Phrenological Society, the first of its kind in the UK, with his brother in 1820, and was one of the founders of the Phrenological Journal in 1823. In 1827, he was elected President of the Edinburgh Phrenological Society.
