Dianne Edwards
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Professor Dianne Edwards CBE, FRS, FRSE, FLS, FLSW (born 1942[1]) is a palaeobotanist, who studies the colonisation of land by plants, and early land plant interactions.
Early life[edit]
Edwards was born in Swansea, South Wales, and spent much of her time at her parents' bungalow on the Gower Peninsula.[2]
Career[edit]
Edwards' work has centred on early plant fossils, the majority of which have been retrieved from the UK.[3] Her interest in early plants was initiated after she studied plant fossils preserved in three dimensions in the mineral pyrite (fools' gold).[3]
Much of her later work has centred on the Rhynie chert and charcoalified fossils, large and microscopic, from the Welsh borderlands and South Wales.
Edwards is a Distinguished Research Professor, and former Head of School within the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, at Cardiff University.[4][5]
She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society, Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, an honorary Fellow at the University of Wales, Swansea, a Corresponding Member of the Botanical Society of America, and has links with China, consulting for the Beijing Museum of Natural History, and working on fossils from that country.[6]
Discoveries[edit]
Among Edwards's most notable works, are the discovery of vascular tissue in Cooksonia,[7] the description and analysis of stomata in early land plants,[8] and very early liverwort-like plants.[9] The charcoalified nature of many of her fossils have enabled her to prove that wildfires took place in the Siluruan period.[10] She has also worked on several enigmatic fossils such as Nematothallus,[11] Tortilicaulis[12] and Prototaxites.[13]
She is the author or co-author of a considerable number of botanical names of fossil plants, such as Danziella D.Edwards (2006)[14] and Demersatheca C.-S. Li & D.Edwards (1996).[15]
Distinctions[edit]
- Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1996.[3]
- President of the Palaeontological Association, 1996-1998.[17]
- Awarded the CBE for Services to Botany in 1999.[18]
- Trustee of the Natural History Museum, London.[6]
- 2004 winner of the Lyell Medal.[19]
- Founding Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales[20] and in July 2010 was appointed as its inaugural Vice-President for Science, Technology and Medicine.
- President of the Linnean Society of London, 2012–2015.
- PhD honoris causa at the Faculty of Science and Technology at Uppsala University, Sweden, since 2014.[21]
References[edit]
- ^ Entry: D. Edwards. Index of Botanists, Harvard University Herbarium, retrieved 16 December 2017
- ^ Walton, Adam (27 March 2012). "Prof. Dianne Edwards". BBC – Wales – Radio Wales – Science Cafe. Retrieved 29 October 2015.
- ^ a b c Professor Dianne Edwards FRS – The first plants
- ^ "Professor Dianne Edwards - People - Cardiff University". Cardiff University. Retrieved 11 September 2018.
- ^ "Professor Dianne Edwards CBE PhD, ScD(Cantab) FRSE, FLS, FLSE, FLSW, FRS". WISRNet, Women in Science Research Network. 2015.
- ^ a b Professor Dianne Edwards
- ^ Edwards, D.; Davies, K. L.; Axe, L. (1992). "A vascular conducting strand in the early land plant Cooksonia". Nature. 357 (6380): 683–685. Bibcode:1992Natur.357..683E. doi:10.1038/357683a0. S2CID 4264332.
- ^ Edwards, D.; Kerp, H.; Hass, H. (1998). "Stomata in early land plants: an anatomical and ecophysiological approach". Journal of Experimental Botany. 49 (Special Issue): 255–278. doi:10.1093/jexbot/49.suppl_1.255.
- ^ Edwards, D.; Duckett, J. G.; Richardson, J. B. (1995). "Hepatic characters in the earliest land plants". Nature. 374 (6523): 635–636. Bibcode:1995Natur.374..635E. doi:10.1038/374635a0. S2CID 4361385.
- ^ Glasspool, I. J.; Edwards, D.; Axe, L. (2004). "Charcoal in the Silurian as evidence for the earliest wildfire". Geology. 32 (5): 381–383. Bibcode:2004Geo....32..381G. doi:10.1130/G20363.1.
- ^ Edwards, D.; Rose, V. (1984). "Cuticles of Nematothallus: a further enigma". Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society. 88 (1–2): 35–54. doi:10.1111/j.1095-8339.1984.tb01563.x.
- ^ Edwards, D. (1979). "A late Silurian flora from the Lower Old Red Sandstone of south-west Dyfed". Palaeontology. 22: 23–52.
- ^ Burgess, N. D.; Edwards, D. (1988). "A new Palaeozoic plant closely allied to Prototaxites Dawson". Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society. 97 (2): 189–203. doi:10.1111/j.1095-8339.1988.tb02461.x.
- ^ Edwards, Dianne (2006), "Danziella artesiana, a new name for Zosterophyllum artesianum from the Lower Devonian of Artois, northern France", Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology, 142 (3–4): 93–101, doi:10.1016/j.revpalbo.2006.04.008
- ^ Li, C.-S. & Edwards, D. (1996), "Demersatheca Li et Edwards, gen. nov., a new genus of early land plants from the Lower Devonian, Yunnan Province, China", Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology, 93 (1–4): 77–88, doi:10.1016/0034-6667(95)00120-4
- ^ International Plant Names Index. D.Edwards.
- ^ PalAss at 60 (PDF). The Palaeontological Association. 2017. p. 34.
- ^ "No. 55513". The London Gazette (Supplement). 12 June 1999. p. 8.
- ^ "Lyell Medal winners". The Geological Society.
- ^ "Founding Fellows". Learned Society of Wales. Learned Society of Wales. Retrieved 15 July 2015.
- ^ "Hans Rosling one of four new honorary doctors at Faculty of Science and Technology – Uppsala University, Sweden". uu.se. Retrieved 3 February 2016.
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