The Rayleigh wave inversion is of the nonlinear optimization problem. The available local linearization techniques (such as the method of the damping least squares) oftencause the solution estimation to fall into the local minimum value of the objective function,and depend largely on the initial model. In addition, some simple Rayleigh wave inversionmethods widely used at present also have apparent defects.The overall optimization method-genetic algorithm-greatly lowers the requirements forselection of the initial modols and is unlikely to fall into the local optimal solution. Thepresent paper first used an available simple and convenient inverse interpretation method toobtain the initial model, thus deciding the searching range of model parameters, and thenmado inversion by using genetic algorithm to obtain the final medium model. The result isvery satisfactory.