Born in Austria in 1929, Jevons survived the Holocaust by being sponsored by a family in England to attend a boarding school in Norfolk.
His parents, Hedwig and Fritz Bettelheim, survived WWII by escaping from Austria to Venezuela, but were separated from their children for some ten years.
[2] Jevons matriculated at King's College, Cambridge, in 1946,[3] where he held a scholarship and took a 1st class degree in the Natural Sciences Tripos in 1950.
He undertook British Council tours in India, East Africa, and Nigeria, between 1972 and 1975.
[5][4] From 1986 to 1987 Jevons was briefly a distance education consultant in southern Africa, before returning to Australia as Professor of Science and Technology Policy at Murdoch University, 1988–1992.