Georgeanna Seegar Jones (July 6, 1912 – March 26, 2005) was an American reproductive endocrinologist who with her husband, Howard W. Jones, pioneered in vitro fertilization in the United States.
Early life
She was born July 6, 1912, in Baltimore, Maryland, to J. King Seegar. Her father was a obstetrician, one of the many things that led to Seegar Jones's interest in medicine from a young age. She was raised along with two siblings. She received her bachelor's degree in 1932 from Goucher College and continued to pursue her medical career at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Thus leading to the development of the hCG pregnancy test that are currently on the market. By the late 1940s, Jones had a copious amount of experience with studying infertility in couples, using endocrinological techniques. At this time, there was no substantial research on endocrinology and the link to infertility so Jones submitted an article of her findings to the American Medical Association titled "Some Newer Aspects of the Management of Infertility". Within this article was the advancements she has made studying the luteal phase defect, a term which Jones is responsible for. In 1949, Jones made the first description of Luteal Phase Dysfunction, and is credited to be the first in using progesterone to treat women with a history of miscarriages, thus allowing many of them to not only conceive, but to deliver healthy babies. The pregnanediol technique was developed by Jones along with other Hopkins members. Conclusions drawn from her individual research showed that low progesterone levels lead to low preganediol levels and provide a greater risk for infertility.
She became the director of Johns Hopkins' Laboratory of Reproductive Physiology and was the Gynecologist-in-Charge of the hospital's gynecologic endocrinology clinic in 1939. She married Howard W. Jones while at Johns Hopkins and they had three children.
Later life
In 1969, Seegar Jones began to identify and examine what is now known as ovarian resistance syndrome. In 1978, the same year that UK scientists were successful with in vitro fertilization, the Joneses took an opportunity from EVMS and moved to Norfolk, Virginia to create an IVF program in the United States. This was after the birth of the first test tube baby in the world, Louise Joy Brown, on July 25, 1978, in England.
She was one of the first in her field to train medical students, residents and fellows for several schools. Many of her students went on to make contributions to academic medicine themselves.