On April 13, 2016, Dr. Lyle V. Jones passed away peacefully in his sleep at age 92. He was a long-standing member of the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience and the Thurstone Lab at UNC Chapel Hill and was a titan in the field of psychmoetrics and statistics. He was also one of the kindest and most generous people you will ever meet.
Dr. Jones was born on March 11, 1924 in Grandview, Washington. Dr. Jones began his college experience at Reed College in 1942, but was immediately called into active duty in the U.S. Army Air Corps where he served until 1946. He finished his B.A. and M.A. in Mathematics and Psychology at the University of Washington and received his Ph.D. in Psychology and Statistics from Stanford in 1950. He began teaching at the University of Chicago and moved on to the University of North Carolina in 1957 where he worked with Dr. L.L. Thurstone in the earliest days of the Psychometric Laboratory. He later served as director of the Thurstone Psychometric Laboratory and as Vice Chancellor and Dean of the Graduate School. Dr. Jones served as managing editor of Psychometrika from 1956-1961 and was President of the Psychometric Society from 1962-1963 and APA Division 5 from 1963-1964.
At the time of his passing, he was the reigning bridge champion in the retirement community and had taken up table tennis at age 88 because he could no longer play his weekly games of tennis out on the court. Dr. Jones was a longtime friend and supporter of the entire field of quantitative psychology and he will be deeply missed.