He worked for two years as graduate fellow in Clark University, Massachusetts, and became assistant professor of biology at the University of Texas at Austin, where after two years he was dismissed for libeling a member of the board of regents.

[8][2] He was made full professor at the University of Cincinnati in 1894 and remained there six years.

From 1900 to 1910 he was the J. Pierpont Morgan Professor of Natural History in Trinity College, Connecticut.

Beginning in 1912 he was director of nature studies in Los Angeles city schools.

[9] A species of eel, Moringua edwardsi, was named for him in 1889 by David Starr Jordan and C. H.