Rhian Jones

Rhian H. Jones (born 1960)^[1] is a British planetary scientist whose research focuses on chondrites and the evidence they provide on how the Solar System formed. She is Reader in Isotope Geo- and Cosmochemistry in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Manchester.^[2]

Education and career

Jones read chemistry at the University of Oxford, earning a bachelor's degree there in 1983. She completed a PhD in geology at the University of Manchester in 1986.^[3]

She went to the University of New Mexico for postdoctoral research, beginning her lifelong work on meteorites, and remained at the university as a faculty member for many years,^[2] also becoming curator of meteorites for the university's Institute of Meteoritics.^[4] In 2015, she retired from the University of New Mexico as a professor emerita,^[5][6] and returned to the University of Manchester as a reader.^[2]

Recognition

Jones is the 2023 winner of the Price Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, "in recognition of her outstanding contributions in a series of closely-linked investigations using chondritic meteorites to understand the composition and formation of the first planetary bodies in the Solar System".^[7]

Asteroid 5366 Rhianjones is named for her.^[1][7]