Professor Dianne Edwards

CBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

, FRS,

FRSE Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and Literature, letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". ...

, FLS, FLSW (born 1942) is a palaeobotanist, who studies the colonisation of land by plants, and early land plant interactions.

Early life

Edwards was born in Swansea, South Wales, and spent much of her time at her parents' bungalow on the

Gower Peninsula The Gower Peninsula (), or simply Gower (), is a peninsula in the South West Wales, south-west of Wales. It is the most westerly part of the historic county of Glamorgan, and is now within the City and County of Swansea. It projects towards th ...

Career

Edwards' work has centred on early plant fossils, the majority of which have been retrieved from the UK. Her interest in early plants was initiated after she studied plant fossils preserved in three dimensions in the mineral

pyrite The mineral pyrite ( ), or iron pyrite, also known as fool's gold, is an iron sulfide with the chemical formula Fe S2 (iron (II) disulfide). Pyrite is the most abundant sulfide mineral. Pyrite's metallic luster and pale brass-yellow hue ...

(fools' gold). Much of her later work has centred on the

Rhynie chert The Rhynie chert is a Lower Devonian Sedimentary rock, sedimentary deposit exhibiting extraordinary fossil detail or completeness (a Lagerstätte). It is exposed near the village of Rhynie, Aberdeenshire, Scotland; a second unit, the Windyfield ...

and charcoalified fossils, large and microscopic, from the Welsh borderlands and

South Wales South Wales ( ) is a Regions of Wales, loosely defined region of Wales bordered by England to the east and mid Wales to the north. Generally considered to include the Historic counties of Wales, historic counties of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire ( ...

. Edwards is a Distinguished

Research Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a 'person who professes'. Professors ...

, and former Head of School within the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, at

Cardiff University Cardiff University () is a public research university in Cardiff, Wales. It was established in 1883 as the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire and became a founding college of the University of Wales in 1893. It was renamed Unive ...

. She is also a Fellow of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

, Fellow of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was establis ...

, an

honorary Fellow Honorary titles (professor, president, reader, lecturer) in academia may be conferred on persons in recognition of contributions by a non-employee or by an employee beyond regular duties. This practice primarily exists in the UK and Germany, as ...

at the University of Wales, Swansea, a Corresponding Member of the Botanical Society of America, and has links with

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

, consulting for the

Beijing Museum of Natural History The National Natural History Museum of China (NNHM; ), previously the Beijing Museum of Natural History, is a municipal public natural history museum in Dongcheng, Beijing, China. It is affiliated with the Beijing Academy of Science and Technolo ...

, and working on fossils from that country.Professor Dianne Edwards
/ref>

Discoveries

Among Edwards's most notable works, are the discovery of vascular tissue in ''

Cooksonia ''Cooksonia'' is an extinct group of primitive land plants, treated as a genus, although probably not monophyletic. The earliest ''Cooksonia'' date from the middle of the Silurian (the Wenlock epoch); the group continued to be an important comp ...

'', the description and analysis of

stomata In botany, a stoma (: stomata, from Greek ''στόμα'', "mouth"), also called a stomate (: stomates), is a pore found in the epidermis of leaves, stems, and other organs, that controls the rate of gas exchange between the internal air spa ...

in early land plants, and very early liverwort-like plants. The charcoalified nature of many of her fossils have enabled her to prove that wildfires took place in the Siluruan period. She has also worked on several enigmatic fossils such as '' Nematothallus'', '' Tortilicaulis'' and '' Prototaxites''. She is the author or co-author of a considerable number of botanical names of fossil plants, such as '' Danziella'' D.Edwards (2006) and '' Demersatheca'' C.-S. Li & D.Edwards (1996).

Distinctions

* Elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

in 1996.Professor Dianne Edwards FRS – The first plants
/ref> *President of the

Palaeontological Association The Palaeontological Association (PalAss for short) is a charitable organisation based in the UK founded in 1957 for the promotion of the study of palaeontology and its allied sciences. Publications The Association publishes two main journals ...

, 1996-1998. *Awarded the

for Services to

Botany Botany, also called plant science, is the branch of natural science and biology studying plants, especially Plant anatomy, their anatomy, Plant taxonomy, taxonomy, and Plant ecology, ecology. A botanist or plant scientist is a scientist who s ...

in 1999. * Trustee of the

Natural History Museum A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history scientific collection, collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, Fungus, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleo ...

, London. * 2004 winner of the

Lyell Medal The Lyell Medal is a prestigious annual scientific medal given by the Geological Society of London, equal in status to the Murchison Medal. This medal is awarded based on one Earth Scientist's exceptional contribution of research to the scientific ...

. * Founding Fellow of the

Learned Society of Wales The Learned Society of Wales () is a national academy, learned society and Charitable organization, charity that exists to "celebrate, recognise, preserve, protect and encourage excellence in all of the scholarly disciplines", and to serve the W ...

and in July 2010 was appointed as its inaugural Vice-President for Science, Technology and Medicine. *President of the

Linnean Society of London The Linnean Society of London is a learned society dedicated to the study and dissemination of information concerning natural history, evolution, and Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy. It possesses several important biological specimen, manuscript a ...

, 2012–2015. * PhD ''

honoris causa An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hono ...

'' at the Faculty of Science and Technology at

Uppsala University Uppsala University (UU) () is a public university, public research university in Uppsala, Sweden. Founded in 1477, it is the List of universities in Sweden, oldest university in Sweden and the Nordic countries still in operation. Initially fou ...

, Sweden, since 2014.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Edwards, Dianne Female fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of the Learned Society of Wales Academics of Cardiff University British paleobotanists Living people Lyell Medal winners 1942 births British women paleontologists 20th-century British women scientists Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of the Linnean Society of London Presidents of the Linnean Society of London Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh