R. Lawrence Edwards

R. Lawrence Edwards is a Regents and Distinguished McKnight University Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, where he specializes in isotope geochemistry within Geoscience. He earned his PhD in 1988 from the California Institute of Technology. Edwards joined the University of Minnesota as an assistant professor in 1988 following his graduate studies and advanced through the ranks to his current distinguished positions, including appointment as Regents Professor in 2015. An isotope geochemist, he is renowned for developing modern uranium-thorium (U-Th or Th-230) dating methods and applying them to climate history, ocean chemistry, and paleoclimate reconstructions from cave deposits. His research establishes patterns of abrupt climate change, rapid ice sheet melting at the end of glacial cycles, and the evolution of the Asian monsoon over the past 640,000 years. Edwards has linked climate shifts in rainfall patterns to cultural changes, such as dry conditions contributing to the demise of China's Tang, Yuan, and Ming Dynasties and ample rainfall enabling rice cultivation expansion during the Northern Song Dynasty.

Edwards has co-authored key radiocarbon age calibration curves, including IntCal13 (Radiocarbon, 2013) and IntCal20 (Radiocarbon, 2020), and influential papers such as "A high-resolution absolute-dated late Pleistocene monsoon record from Hulu Cave, China" (Science, 2001), "The Holocene Asian monsoon: links to solar changes and North Atlantic climate" (Science, 2005), and "The Asian monsoon over the past 640,000 years and ice age terminations" (Nature, 2016). He has published 270 journal articles, including 33 in Science and Nature, and co-authored a chapter for an upcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. His research has secured $12.3 million in funding across 57 grants and involved collaborations with over 400 scientists from more than 200 institutions. One of the world's most cited earth scientists—second in the last decade—Edwards has received the National Medal of Science (2025), Fellowship in the National Academy of Sciences (2009), American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2004), Arthur L. Day Prize and Lectureship (2009), John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (2009), C.C. Patterson Medal from the Geochemical Society, and fellowships from AAAS, AGU, Geochemical Society, and European Association of Geochemistry. He mentors students and postdocs, many now faculty at leading institutions, and has served on advisory boards including UNESCO's International Research Center on Karst.

Professional Email: rle@umn.edu