Edwards served in the military in World War II. In 1948, after the war, Edwards went to study at the University of Wales, then to the University of Edinburgh in 1951, where he completed his PhD. His studies had been on how embyros developed in mice. He had a research position at the California Institute of Technology in 1957. In 1958 he returned to England and began work for the National Institute of Medical Research. While at the Institute he began to study human fertilisation. In 1962, he took a up a new job at the University of Glasgow, but in 1963 went to Cambridge University. In 1965 he went back to the US where he was a visiting scientist at Johns Hopkins University and later at the University of North Carolina. he returned to Cambridge and taught physiology from 1969.