Barry Jones

Biography

The Hon Barry Jones was the first (and so far the only) person elected Fellow of all four Australian learned academies. He was a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) from 1972-77, when he resigned to go into federal politics. In 1977, he was elected to the House of Representatives until his retirement in 1998. He was Minister for Science from 1983-90, in which role he presided over the growth of organisations such as the CSIRO, the creation of the Australia Prize, Questacon and the Commission for the Future. In 1992 he was elected National President of the ALP, serving until 2000. He became National President again from 2005-06. Jones was the chief architect of the Knowledge Nation education concept, as chair of the Chifley Research Centre’s Knowledge Nation Taskforce. During this time he was also a member of the Council of the National Library of Australia. He was the Vice-President of the World Heritage Committee from 1995-96 and a member of the Executive Board of UNESCO from 1991-95. Jones holds the honorary degrees of Doctor of Letters from the University of Technology, Sydney and the University of Wollongong, Doctor of Science from Macquarie University and Doctor of Laws from the University of Melbourne. In 1999 he was appointed an adjunct professor at Monash University and became a Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Melbourne in 2005. In 1999 he was elected a Visiting Fellow Commoner at Trinity College, Cambridge. He is also a Fellow of the Australian College of Educators (FACE).