Edward Neville Andrade was a Sephardi Jew, his family having arrived in London from Portugal during the Napoleonic era, and was a descendant of Moses da Costa Andrade (not Moses da Costa as is sometimes stated). da Costa Andrade was his 2nd great-grandfather, a feather merchant in London's East End. The surname "Andrade" might nevertheless be of Portuguese origin (see notes on original pronunciation) born and raised in London he attended St. Dunstan's College in Catford, which was noted as the first school to have a laboratory for teaching secondary school age pupils. From there he attended University College London under Prof F. T. Trouton where he gained a first-class honours degree in physics in 1907. After graduating he stayed on to pursue research, choosing to study the flow of solid metals under stress, a subject to which he returned several times over the sixty-year course of his research career