Joseph Edwards studied medicine at King's College and King's College Hospital. After house appointments at King's he was a senior demonstrator in anatomy at the Middlesex Hospital before specialising in plastic surgery. He published extensively on the role of relaxin as an aetiological factor in diabetic embryopathy, work which earned him an Arris and Gale lectureship in 1979 and the bronze medal of the Alexander Vichnevsky Surgical Institute in Moscow. He was a consultant plastic surgeon at Newcastle and honorary research fellow in the University of Newcastle. He served on the Council of the British Association of Plastic Surgeons and was a member of the New York Academy of Science. He died on 22 October 2002.