Alan A. Jones

Alan Anthony Jones (1944 in Jamestown, NY – May 23, 2006) was an American professor of chemistry at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. During his more than thirty years at Clark he served as a mentor and advisor to hundreds of undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral students. He was a leading researcher in the field of NMR and polymer physics. His research focused on solid state NMR spectroscopy of polymer systems. This work was supported for many years through grants from agencies such as the National Science Foundation, Petroleum Research Fund and the Army Research Office.

Jones died unexpectedly on May 23, 2006. Before his death, Jones had been researching synthetic polymers that would be suitable membranes for use in chemical separations, fuel cells and solid electrolytes. He used PFG NMR to follow the diffusion of small molecules or ions and determine their self-diffusion coefficient. Diffusion in these systems was observed to be enhanced by up to an order of magnitude by the addition of nanoparticles and the mechanism for this enhancement was under investigation at the time of his death.

As a professor at Clark Dr. Jones was noted as one of the best professors and he received the institution’s Outstanding Teacher Award in 1988. During his tenure, more than twenty graduate students in his research group earned their Ph.D. degrees. He also served in the administration at Clark, first at Acting Provost (1987–1988) and later as Dean of Graduate Studies and Research (1993–1995).

He attended Colgate University and received his B.A. in 1966. He earned a Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1972 and worked at Clark after working as a postdoctoral fellow at Dartmouth College under Walter H. Stockmayer from 1972-74. At Clark, Jones and fellow professor Paul Inglefield built an NMR facility at the university and wrote over 100 research papers. Some of Jones' ideas led to new ideas for the use of NMR in studying polymer systems, such as his highly cited 1977 paper: Models for spin relaxation in dilute solutions of randomly coiled polymers.