Background
Edwards was born in East St. Louis, Illinois, United States on October 26, 1926. Her mother, Annie Jordan, was a former schoolteacher and her father, Ernest Hoover, was an insurance manager.
chemist educator researcher scientist writer
Edwards was born in East St. Louis, Illinois, United States on October 26, 1926. Her mother, Annie Jordan, was a former schoolteacher and her father, Ernest Hoover, was an insurance manager.
Edwards attended Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) at the age of fifteen, earning bachelor's degree from it in 1946, as well as master's degree a year later. She entered a home economics program with minors in nutrition and chemistry. Also she studied at the Iowa State University and got doctor's degree from it in 1950.
Edwards’s doctoral dissertation was a study of methionine, an essential amino acid that she said has “not only the good things needed to synthesize protein, but also has sulfur, which can be given to other compounds and be easily released."
At the beginning of her career, Edwards conducted chemical analyses of an animal source of protein at Swift and Co.
Edwards went to Tuskegee as a faculty member and a research associate of the Carver Foundation.
In 1952 she became head of Tuskegee’s department of foods and nutrition. Edwards’s nutritional research later expanded to studies of the amino acid composition of food, the utilization of protein from vegetarian diets, and the planning of well-balanced and nutritious diets, especially for low-income and disadvantaged populations in the United States and developing countries.
Designing a new curriculum for the School of Human Ecology at Howard University, Washington, in the 1970s was a high point of Edwards’s career.
Howard’s School of Human Ecology conducted research and evaluated work in providing resources for low-income people so that they could help themselves. It taught parenting, childcare, nutrition, budgeting, job skills, and other skills useful in overcoming obstacles.
In 1974, Edwards was appointed Dean of the School of Human Ecology, a position she held until 1987.
In 1985 Edwards became director of a five-year project sponsored by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to study the nutritional, medical, psychological, socioeconomic, and lifestyle factors which influence pregnancy outcomes in low-income women.
Nine years later she served as an editor of the Journal of Nutrition May supplement on “African American Women and Their Pregnancies”.
A prolific writer who published numerous scientific papers, authoring 160 research papers, Edwards helped to establish a family resource development program in her birthplace, East St. Louis, Illinois.
Her scientific focus was on finding low-cost foods with an optimal amino acid composition, with a special interest in methionine metabolism, to improve the nutrition and well-being of disadvantaged people.
Edwards was cited by the National Council of Negro Women for outstanding contributions to science, received three citations from the Illinois House of Representatives for devotion to the cause of eliminating poverty and was honored by the State of Illinois on April 5, 1984, with the declaration of that day as "Dr. Cecile Hoover Edwards Day."
She was a member of such societies as American Institute of Nutrition; Southeastern Conference of Teachers of Foods and Nutrition, 1971; National Institute of Health, 1972-75; and National Conference on Black Youth Unemployment, 1983.
In 1952 Edwards married Gerald Alonzo Edwards, a physical chemist with whom she collaborated on many research projects, and who predeceased her by three months. They had three children.
