John W. Edwards, 1939-2011

Biographical History

John William Edwards was born in Colfax, Iowa on July 8, 1939. In 1947, his father died of a heart attack and three years later, in 1950, his mother moved with Edwards and his older brother to Portland, Oregon where she had obtained a position teaching middle school. Edwards remained in Portland until he graduated from high school and was awarded a scholarship to attend Yale University. He received a B.A. in physics from Yale in 1961 and an M.S. in physics from the University of Washington, Seattle in 1963. He served in the U.S. Peace Corps from 1963 to 1965 teaching secondary school physics in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia at Haile Selaisse I University (now Addis Ababa University). In 1967, Edwards married Adelaide Majerus. They had two daughters, Susan Elizabeth (b. 1967) and Mary Joanna (b. 1968). Edwards worked at NASA as an aerospace engineer from 1965 until he retired in 2007, and continued work for NASA as a contractor to 2010.

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