George Neville Jones was born in Boston, Lincolnshire, England on January 26, 1903, the eldest of seven children (six brothers and a sister).
[1] He became an assistant professor in 1944, and was appointed a Guggenheim Fellow for a study of the botany of the Northwest Coast of North America.
[3] Jones was first married to Florence Lucinda Freeman, with whom he collected species and coauthored scientific papers.
He was survived by his wife, Almut Gitter Jones, who was also in the car; by two daughters from a previous marriage, and all his siblings.
He and his wife were on their way to Robert Allerton Park, a natural area belonging to the University of Illinois, at the time of the accident.