John Stephen Jones DSc FLSW FRS[3] (born 24 March 1944)[2] is a British geneticist and, from 1995 to 1999 as well as from 2008 to June 2010, was Head of the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London.
[8] As a child in Ceredigion Jones spoke a lot of Welsh until he was 6 or 7 years old, and as a keen observer of local wildlife was particularly interested in birds.
[8] In 1967 he won the Gunning Victoria Jubilee Prize in Zoology for his essay, “Area effects and the structure of peripheral populations of Cepaea nemoralis”.
[11] He stayed on in Edinburgh to do research for a Doctor of Philosophy degree on the ecological genetics of Cepaea, a snail whose shell is polymorphic in colour pattern, making it a model organism for evolutionary biologists.
[1][8] After his PhD, Jones also completed post-doctoral research into the genetics of Drosophila at the University of Chicago to widen his experience.
He gave the following reason for his choice: "There is a series of books by Anthony Powell called A Dance to the Music of Time, which actually is a really lovely way of describing evolution.
He was critical of the BBC for giving too much space and credence to maverick views on science,[21] including deniers of anthropogenic global warming.
Jones describes "[a]ttempts to give a place to anyone, however unqualified, who claims interest can make for false balance: to free publicity to marginal opinions and not to impartiality, but its opposite".
[28] In an interview on the BBC Radio 5 show '5 Live Breakfast' hosted by Nicky Campbell and Shelagh Fogarty on 13 January 2009, Jones described private schools as a "cancer on the education system".
[32] National Life Stories conducted an oral history interview (C1672/12) with Steve Jones in 2015 for its Science and Religion collection held by the British Library.
[33] Jones's view that in humans "Natural selection has to some extent been repealed"[34] dates back at least to 1991 and has been the focus of newspaper reports and radio interviews.