Russell Campbell Jones

BSc Hons Wool Technology (University of NSW, 1961); PhD (University of Sydney, 1966)

Russell Jones was supported by a Wool Industry Fund Scholarship for his undergraduate studies, Parke, Davis & Co for PhD studies, an NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship at Cornell University and a Ford Foundation Fellowship at the Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London. In 1972 he was appointed a foundation lecturer at the University of Newcastle where he established undergraduate courses and research in reproduction. 

Jones’s undergraduate studies examined methods for deep-freezing and inseminating ram semen. As part of the artificial breeding programme at the Institute of Zoology he resolved the ultrastructural damage to sperm during storage in vitro and the nature of changes to their membranes during epididymal maturation, and established methods for collecting and freezing semen from wild elephants. Research at Newcastle focused on the vertebrate epididymis, particularly to determine its role in sperm production for the wide variety of mating strategies. Ultrastructure and endocrine studies identified analogous regions of the epididymis of selected model animals (Port Jackson shark, platypus and echidna, tammar wallaby, African elephant, laboratory rat, mouse and rabbit and Japanese quail), and provided a modern interpretation of the evolution of the vertebrate epididymis, including the interpretation that it evolved as part of male strategies to achieve paternity in competitive mating systems. Studies on the rat with John Clulow demonstrated the importance of the efferent ducts in fluid and solute transport in the epididymis and mechanisms and control of the process.