ScienceMakers Toolkit Manual - The History Makers

96
ScienceMakers
Spotlight: George Jones
Full Name: George Henry Jones, Jr.
Born: February 21, 1942
Place: Muskogee, OK
Parents: Bernice I. Jones
George Henry Jones, Sr.
Education: Manual Training High School – Muskogee, OK (1959)
Harvard University – Cambridge, MA
(B.A. Biochemical Sciences, 1963)
University of California, Berkeley – Berkeley, CA
(Ph.D. Biochemistry, 1968)
Type of Science: Biology
Achievements: Researches the mechanism and regulation of antibiotic synthesis in the
bacteria streptomyces
Received multiple National Science Foundation grants to study RNA
Biography
Dr. George Jones was born George Henry Jones, Jr. on February 21, 1942 in Muskogee,
Oklahoma to George Henry Jones, Sr. and Bernice I. Jones. Jones attended Manual Training High
School in Muskogee, graduating in 1959. He received his B.A. degree in biochemical sciences from
Harvard University in 1963, and went on to the University of California, Berkeley, where in 1968
he earned his Ph.D. degree in biochemistry under the tutelage of Dr. C.E. Ballou.
After completing his Ph.D., Jones worked as a visiting scientist at the National Institutes of Health
from 1968 to 1970. He then made an international move to the University of Geneva in Switzerland,
where he completed a postdoctoral fellowship between 1970 and 1971. Upon returning to the
United States, Jones took on a professorship in the Zoology Department at the University of Michigan
where he worked from 1971 to 1975. In 1975, Jones moved over to the Department of Biology
where he chaired the Department of Cellular and Molecular Biology from 1980 to 1982.
In 1984, Jones became professor and associate chairman for space and facilities at the University of
Michigan, where he also taught in the Division of Biological Sciences and served as associate dean
at the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies. Between 1986 and 1989, Jones served as a
professor in the Department of Biology. He moved to Emory University in 1989 to serve as its dean