Georgeanna Seegar Jones
The Modern Laboratory · People
The Modern Laboratory
Georgeanna Seegar Jones
She showed where the pregnancy hormone comes from, then used hormones to give IVF several eggs instead of one.
A doctor's daughter. Georgeanna Seegar was born in Baltimore on 6 July 1912, the daughter of an obstetrician. She graduated from Goucher College in 1932 and took her medical degree at Johns Hopkins in 1936. In 1940 she married the surgeon Howard W. Jones Jr. They had three children.
The placenta's hormone. Working with George Gey and Louis Hellman, she grew placental cells in culture and showed that they made a gonadotrophin. Their paper in Science in 1938 helped establish that the pregnancy hormone, now called hCG, comes from the placenta, not the pituitary gland. The finding later underpinned the pregnancy test.
Johns Hopkins. From 1938 until 1978 she ran the Gynecological Endocrine Clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital and directed its Laboratory of Reproductive Physiology. In 1949 she wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association on newer ways of managing infertility. She also studied women whose bodies made too little progesterone after ovulation. In 1970 she became the first woman president of the American Fertility Society. For more than thirty years she co-edited Obstetrical and Gynecological Survey.
Norfolk. In 1978 she and Howard moved to Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Virginia. Their IVF programme began in 1980, and that year they collected the single egg of a natural cycle 41 times without a pregnancy. Georgeanna reasoned that hMG, followed by hCG, could ripen several follicles at once. From January 1981 the team did just that, watching each woman closely with blood tests and ultrasound. Elizabeth Carr, the first American IVF baby, was born on 28 December 1981. Their careful stimulation became the pattern for IVF around the world.
Later years. Among her honours was the Distinguished Scientist Award of the Society for Gynecologic Investigation in 2000. She died on 26 March 2005, aged 92. Her idea of several eggs, gently grown, is still where most IVF cycles begin.
Also see: Howard W. Jones Jr, Bruno Lunenfeld
About the sources
- US National Library of Medicine, Changing the Face of Medicine: “Biography: Dr. Georgeanna Seegar Jones” (nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/changing-the-face-of-medicine), consulted October 2026: hCG research while a student; MD 1936; Gynecological Endocrine Clinic and Laboratory of Reproductive Physiology, 1938 to 1978; move to Norfolk 1978; three children; co-editor of Obstetrical and Gynecological Survey 1957 to 1989; SGI Distinguished Scientist Award 2000.
- Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives, Johns Hopkins: “Howard W. and Georgeanna Seegar Jones” (medicalarchives.jhmi.edu): father an obstetrician; Goucher 1932; first woman president of the American Fertility Society, 1970; 1912 to 2005.
- Ruffenach SC. “Georgeanna Seegar Jones (1912–2005).” Embryo Project Encyclopedia, Arizona State University, 22 July 2009: born 6 July 1912, Baltimore; died 26 March 2005; married 1940; Jones Institute; Elizabeth Carr born 28 December 1981.
- Gey GO, Seegar GE, Hellman LM. The production of a gonadotrophic substance (prolan) by placental cells in tissue culture. Science 1938;88(2283):306–307.
- Jones GE. Some newer aspects of the management of infertility. Journal of the American Medical Association 1949;141(16):1123–1129.
- Garcia J, Acosta A, Andrews MC, Jones GS, Jones HW, et al. In vitro fertilization in Norfolk, Virginia, 1980–1983. Journal of In Vitro Fertilization and Embryo Transfer 1984;1(1):24–28.
- Garcia JE, Jones GS, Acosta AA, Wright G. Human menopausal gonadotropin/human chorionic gonadotropin follicular maturation for oocyte aspiration: phase I, 1981. Fertility and Sterility 1983;39(2):167–173.
- Lunenfeld B, et al. The development of gonadotropins for clinical use in the treatment of infertility. Frontiers in Endocrinology 2019;10:429 (the Joneses' hMG/hCG protocols of 1981).
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Compiled with AI-assisted research and checked against the original sources. Not yet peer-reviewed. Corrections are warmly welcomed.
