John Hall-Jones

John Hall-Jones (14 September 1927 – 19 November 2015) was a New Zealand historian, otolaryngologist and outdoorsman. Jones concentrated on the history of Southland and Otago, New Zealand's southernmost regions, as well as the New Zealand Subantarctic Islands.

Born in 1927, Hall-Jones was the great–grandson of John Turnbull Thomson (1821–1884), a British architect and civil engineer who was the original surveyor of the city of Invercargill, He studied medicine at the University of Otago, graduating MB ChB in 1953, and then undertook postgraduate training in London. Until his retirement at the age of 60, Hall-Jones was a practising otolaryngologist,

In the 1995 New Year Honours, Hall-Jones was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, for services to medicine and local history. In 2007, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree by the University of Otago. while Goldfields of the South was a Sir James Wattie Book award finalist.

In 2015, he published his autobiography, A Life of Adventures, just a few months before his death. He died on 19 November 2015, at the age of 88.