Lois M. Jones and the University of Georgia Department of Geology

Lois M. Jones was one of six or seven women who, in 1969, were the first women to reach the South Pole. She in fact led the expedition, and she is commonly credited with being the first woman to reach the South Pole. She went on to be well-known for her research in Antarctica's dry valleys.

Lois Jones's education consisted of BS and MS degrees in chemistry and a Ph. D. in geology from the Ohio State University, where she worked with Gunter Faure. She published sixty papers and abstracts during her career, including papers in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, Chemical Geology, Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Economic Geology, the Geological Society of America Bulletin, Geology, Geologische Rundschau, and Nature.

Lois Jones was an assistant professor in the Department of Geology of the University of Georgia from roughly 1969 to 1977. She is remembered at UGA as an outstanding teacher. She went on from UGA to work for Conoco, where she was a senior research scientist and was employed for sixteen years. In another, if more tenuous, connection to UGA, she was the first person to publish on research involving laser ablation of minerals to determine isotope ratios, an area of research later pursued in the UGA Department of Geology's Stable Isotope Laboratory by Dr. Douglas E. Crowe and his students.

Lois Jones's last academic appointment was as an assistant professor of geology at Kansas State University. After retirement, she moved back to Ohio and served in the English as a Second Language program in Columbus, Ohio. She endowed two fellowships at Ohio State University, the Lois M. Jones Fellowship Fund in Geological Sciences and the Lois M. Jones Endowment for Cancer Research Fellowships. She died in Columbus, Ohio, on March 13, 2000, at the age of 65.

Sources:
The November 30, 2003, Antarctic Sun, a publication of the United States Antarctic Program at McMurdo Station.
Pers. comm. with Douglas E. Crowe
GEOREF
www.aaus.net/Memorium%20pages/Lois%20M.%20Jones.htm

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