Dr. Howard W. Jones Jr., best known for bringing the revolutionary fertility treatment IVF to the United States in 1981 was a major innovator in women’s and transgender health as well, recalls Dr. Eli Adashi, former dean of medicine and biological sciences, in the September edition of the journal <em>Fertility and Sterility</em>. Jones died July 31.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Even before Dr. Howard Jones and wife Georgeanna Jones co-led the first successful in vitro fertilization treatment in the United States in 1981, he was already a major innovator in gynecology, fertility and transgender medicine, said Dr. Eli Adashi, former dean of medicine and biological sciences at Brown University.

Jones died July 31, 2015, at the age of 104. Adashi, who studied and published with his mentor Jones, wrote a remembrance in the September issue of the journal Fertility and Sterility.

“Dr. Jones did nothing less than transform an evolving discipline several times over,” Adashi wrote. “In the process, a life of unparalleled accomplishments unfolded during which the foundation of multiple present-day constructs has been laid.”

Jones began practicing medicine in the mid-1930s and went on to contribute to advances in gynecologic cancers, treatment of Müllerian duct anomalies, which can terminate pregnancies, reconstruction of ambiguous genitalia, and gender reassignment and hormone therapies.

Adashi noted that Jones’ legacy lives on in hundreds of trainees — Adashi included.