Edmund Paul Russell III received his bachelors degree in English from Stanford University in 1980 and his doctorate in biology from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor in 1993. Between degrees, he was a writer, editor, and project leader for Volunteers in Asia from 1980-1982 in the Philippines, a teacher in American literature at Duchesne Academy in Omaha, Nebraska for a school year, and manager for the Lou Henry Hoover House at Stanford from 1984-1986.

Russell joined the University of Virginia faculty in 1994, after a year as a professorial lecturer in the Department of History at the American University in Washington, D.C. He was promoted at Virginia to associate professor in 2000 and to full professor in 2011, teaching in the Department of Science, Technology, and Society (STS) and the Department of History.

In 2013, Russell joined the University of Kansas Department of History as the Joyce and Elizabeth Hall Distinguished Professor of United States History. He held this role until 2016, when he moved to Boston University's Department of History. In 2019, Russell joined the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University in the Department of History.

Russell's major published works have focused on the history and use of chemical warfare against humans and insects and other topics related to environmental and evolutionary history. His books have included War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring (2001), Evolutionary History: Uniting History and Biology to Understand Life on Earth (2011), and co-editing Natural Enemy, Natural Ally: Toward and Environmental History of War (2004) with Richard P. Tucker. Russell has taught courses in environmental history within the United Staes and in a global context, the history of science and technology in the United States, and introducing undergraduates to research and historians' practices.

Russell has received several grants from the National Science Foundation, including a CAREER award in the mid-1990s, as well as an award to revise undergraduate curricula. He has been active in the American Society for Environmental History (ASEH) and the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT), and he served as a member of the editorial board for Environmental History from 2013-2017. Russell was a distinguished lecturer for the Organization of American Historians (OAH) from 2008-2018 and won several teaching awards while at the University of Viriginia, among other awards and recognitions.

[Information retrieved from Edmund Paul Russell III's CV.]