He was an outspoken critic of Rachel Carson and efforts to ban DDT, famously eating the substance to demonstrate its safety to humans.

He was also a noted mountain climber, spending nine seasons as a ranger-naturalist in Glacier National Park during the 1940s and '50s, and returning often to collect insects and map routes.

He studied botany at Butler University, Indiana, graduating in 1942, then enlisted in the United States Army during World War II, serving as a combat medic with the 95th Infantry Division in Europe.

[8] In 2007 The Coleopterists Society established the annual J. Gordon Edwards Prize for the best published paper based on a Master's Thesis dealing with beetles.

[16] He was active as a member of, or consultant for, a wide range of lobby groups opposed to environmental regulation, including the American Council on Science and Health.

[18] Edwards last work, titled DDT: A Case Study in Scientific Fraud[19] was published in 2004 after his death in the fringe partizan Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, in which he makes the impassioned plea "The ban on DDT, founded on erroneous or fraudulent reports and imposed by one powerful bureaucrat, has caused millions of deaths, while sapping the strength and productivity of countless human beings in underdeveloped countries.

In 1971 he gave testimony before the Congressional House Committee on Agriculture which was widely cited and circulated, despite having published no scientific papers on DDT or birds at the time.

[21] Edwards, Jukes, and White-Stevens sued the Times for libel, and in 1976 were awarded $61,000, a ruling that was overturned the following year by a Federal appeals court citing freedom of the press to report on public figures.

[28] On July 19, 2004,[29] Edwards died of a heart attack at the age of 84 while hiking up Divide Mountain on the eastern edge of Glacier National Park with his wife, Alice.