Albert F. A. L. Jones

Albert Francis Arthur Lofley Jones (9 August 1920 – 11 September 2013) was a New Zealand amateur astronomer, and a prolific variable star and comet observer, a member of the Variable Star Section and the Comet Section of the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand.

Life Albert Jones was born in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1920 and was educated at Timaru Boys' High School. At the beginning of the Second World War he joined the army, but in 1942 he was classified unfit for overseas service. He died in Nelson, New Zealand, in 2013.

Astronomy

Achievements In 1963 he became the sixth astronomer in history to make 100,000 observations of variable stars and by 2004 he became the first to make more than 500,000 observations. The following year, asteroid 3152 Jones was named after him. The comet C/2000 W1 discovery brought him the Edgar Wilson Award, administered by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, in 2001. In 2004 he received an honorary Doctorate of Science from the Victoria University of Wellington.