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University Distinguished Lecture

Clive A. Edwards

Clive A. Edwards was born in Worcester, England, and holds B.Sc. (Hons), M.Sc. and an honorary D.Sc from Bristol University, England, and, after the award of a Kellogg Foundation Fellowship, M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Wisconsin. He worked for the British Ministry of Agriculture for four years and was a Senior Principal Scientific Officer at the Rothamsted Experimental Station, Harpenden, Herts, U.K., from 1960 to 1985. From 1966-1968 he was a Visiting Professor at Purdue University. He was appointed as Chair of the Department of Entomology at The Ohio State University in 1985.

He has published extensively on soil ecology, environmental toxicology, and sustainable agriculture, and he is currently recognized as a world authority on earthworms. His book "Ecology and Biology of Earthworms," now in its 3rd edition, is the first comprehensive book on earthworms since Charles Darwin's "The Production of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Earthworms" which was published in 1881. In 1996, Professor Edwards's book Ecology of Earthworms won a Presidential Citation from the U.S. Soil & Water Conservation Society.

A prolific writer, he has published 345 scientific papers including writing, editing or co-editing 28 books. In 1972 he was elected to Fellowship of the U.K. Institute of Biology and in 1984 to the Fellowship of the U.K. Royal Society of Arts, from which he received a prestigious ERAS Pollution Abatement Award.

In 1990 he co-authored a successful proposal for an Eminent Scholar position in Soil Ecology at Ohio State. In 1996 the Office of Academic Affairs presented him with the OSU International Outstanding Faculty Award, and he received an OSU Distinguished Scholar Award in 1998.