[9] His father left home when he was seven years old;[10] after his mother moved to work as a dressmaker in England in 1948, part of the Windrush generation, Palmer grew up in Kingston, Jamaica, in the care of his eight aunts.

[10] After leaving school in 1958 with six O-levels and two A-levels, in botany and zoology, he found a job as a junior lab technician at Queen Elizabeth College, London University, working for Professor Garth Chapman.

After an interview with Professor Anna Macleod, in 1964, he secured a place to study for a PhD in grain science and technology jointly with Heriot-Watt College and the University of Edinburgh, beginning his doctorate in 1965.

A small number of grains, with high amylase/pre-germination activity, can cause unexpected storage or processing problems and visual or average analyses do not always identify uneven distribution.

On 29 April 2021, it was announced that Sir Geoff Palmer had been appointed as the Chancellor of Heriot-Watt University, for an initial term of five years.

[18] The role is central to promoting Heriot-Watt's prominence and profile in research in the university's campuses in Scotland, Malaysia and Dubai.

Palmer has also authored a book on the history of slavery, The Enlightenment Abolished: Citizens of Britishness (2007), and has spoken out extensively against the slave trade.

[21][22] As an accepted world authority on slavery and the Atlantic slave trade, Toronto and the City of Edinburgh Councils have adopted his views rather than new research from Sir Tom Devine.

[26] During the George Floyd protests, Palmer was a leading proponent of calls to reinterpret the Melville Monument, a large column in St Andrew Square, Edinburgh dedicated to Scottish statesman Henry Dundas, due to his support for "gradual abolition", which delayed the abolition of slave trade by fifteen years.

Noting that he did not support the removal of controversial statues "because [they are] part of black history", Palmer instead called on Scottish society to "take down...

"[29] In recognition of his work and achievements in the field of grain science, Palmer was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2003 Birthday Honours.