---
title: The Hormone Researcher Behind America's First IVF Baby Joins the National Women's Hall of Fame
description: She traced the pregnancy hormone to the placenta as a Johns Hopkins student and helped bring the first US IVF baby, Elizabeth Carr, into the world in 1981.
author: Dr Marina Nani (Editor-in-Chief)
date: 2026-09-29T15:15:34.524Z
updated: 2026-09-29T15:15:34.532Z
canonical: https://richwoman.co/article/georgeanna-seegar-jones-ivf-womens-hall-of-fame
image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/georgeanna-seegar-jones-portrait-365365.webp
categories: Inspiration
content_type: Profile
region: United States
publication: Rich Woman Magazine
schema_type: Article
---

Georgeanna Seegar Jones, who ran the reproductive hormone laboratory at Johns Hopkins for 40 years before founding America's first in vitro fertilization program with her husband, was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame on Sept. 24, 2026, 21 years after her death. The Hall's citation says she "helped turn the hope of parenthood into reality for countless families and, in the process, shaped an entire field of medicine."

She was one of ten women in the [2026 class](https://www.womenofthehall.org/hall-of-fame-induction/2026-inductees/), alongside former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, World War II spy Virginia Hall, poet Audre Lorde and oceanographer Marie Tharp.

## Georgeanna Traced the Pregnancy Hormone to the Placenta While Still a Medical Student

Georgeanna was born in Baltimore in 1912 and studied at Goucher College before going on to the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Doctors at the time believed the pregnancy hormone came from the pituitary gland. While still a student, she showed that it comes from the placenta instead. That hormone is now called human chorionic gonadotropin, or hCG. [The National Library of Medicine's biography of her](https://cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov/physicians/biography_291.html) dates the finding to 1936, the year she earned her medical degree.

She was still in her twenties when, after two years of hospital and National Cancer Institute training, she was put in charge of the Gynecological Endocrine Clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1938 and made director of its Laboratory of Reproductive Physiology. The library records her as the first full-time reproductive endocrinologist at a medical school, at a time when, as the Hall puts it, few women held leadership roles in medicine.

In 1939 she and Howard W. Jones Jr., a pelvic surgeon, set up a Division of Reproductive Endocrinology at Johns Hopkins. They married the following year and had three children, and together they trained the residents and fellows who built reproductive endocrinology into a specialty.

## Georgeanna Found a Treatable Cause of Infertility in 1949 and a Way to Get More Eggs for IVF in 1969

In 1949 Georgeanna became the first to describe what doctors now call the "luteal phase defect": too little of the hormone progesterone in the days after ovulation. The Jones Foundation says she showed the shortfall mattered for fertility and could be treated.

In 1969 she showed that giving women the hormone menopausal gonadotropin increased the number of eggs available for in vitro fertilization, in which an egg is fertilized outside the body. She paired it with chorionic gonadotropin, the same pregnancy hormone she had traced as a student, in the protocol she used to treat infertility.

## The Joneses Moved to Norfolk in 1978 and Started the First IVF Program in the United States

On July 25, 1978, Louise Brown, the world's first IVF baby, was born in England. The Jones Foundation says Georgeanna and Howard moved to Norfolk, Virginia, that same day, to join Eastern Virginia Medical School. When a local newspaper reporter asked whether the procedure could be done in Norfolk, the couple said it could. Georgeanna was in her sixties and had just left the Hopkins posts she had held since 1938.

At Eastern Virginia Medical School, a team of young scientists, backed by money from a former patient, set about making IVF work with the hormone stimulation methods Georgeanna had developed. According to the foundation, her combination of menopausal gonadotropin and chorionic gonadotropin greatly increased the success rate of IVF. On Dec. 28, 1981, Judy Carr gave birth to Elizabeth Carr, the first baby born through IVF in the United States.

In a video on the Eastern Virginia Medical School website, quoted by SGF Jones Institute, Elizabeth Carr said of the couple: "The two of them, separately, were both incredible doctors, but together as a pair, they were really a powerhouse." She also remembered Georgeanna's plain explanation of how she came to be: "it's just a sperm and an egg fertilized in a petri dish and nine months later, out you came."

The Joneses established the Howard and Georgeanna Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine in 1983. The Jones Foundation credits the training the Joneses gave other doctors with indirectly leading to more than 250,000 IVF births in the United States, including more than 3,800 babies born from treatment at the institute itself.

## Georgeanna Was the First Woman President of the American Fertility Society

Georgeanna was the first woman to serve as president of the American Fertility Society, and the Medical College of Pennsylvania named her Woman Scientist of the Year. She died in 2005.

## The Jones Foundation Is Marking Her Induction With a $100,000 IVF Research Grant

The Howard and Georgeanna Jones Foundation for Reproductive Medicine, which the couple set up in 1984, is marking her induction with a $100,000 grant offered with the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. The Georgeanna Seegar Jones, MD, Women of the Hall Investigative Scientist Award will fund one research project on improving the assisted reproductive techniques used in IVF.

Details of the award are on the Jones Foundation's website, [jonesfound.org](https://www.jonesfound.org/).

## FAQ

**Q: Where is the National Women's Hall of Fame?**
The Hall is at 1 Canal Street in Seneca Falls, New York. It has honored American women since 1973 and holds its induction ceremony every two years.

**Q: Who else was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2026?**
Besides Georgeanna, Janet Yellen, Virginia Hall, Audre Lorde and Marie Tharp, the 2026 class included Edith S. Green, the Oregon congresswoman known as the "Mother of Title IX"; Harriet Jacobs, author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; Adele Smith Simmons, former president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; S. Mona Sinha, chief executive of Equality Now; and children's author Judith Viorst.

**Q: Is the Jones Institute still open?**
Yes, under a new name. In July 2021 the Eastern Virginia Medical School Jones Institute moved all patient care to SGF Jones Institute, part of Shady Grove Fertility, where the institute's research and patient care continue.