Eight Virginia Women in History honored in traveling exhibition at Slover Library

NORFOLK, VA — Slover Library is hosting the Library of Virginia’s traveling exhibition for the 2019 Virginia Women in History project. The annual project honors women of the past and present who developed new approaches to old problems, strove for excellence based on the courage of their convictions, and initiated changes in their communities, state, and nation that continue to effect our lives today.

This year, eight Virginia women were recognized by the Library of Virginia in partnership with the Virginia Women’s Monument Commission, including Norfolk’s own Georgeanna Seegar Jones. A graduate of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Jones was a pioneer in the field of reproductive endocrinology and helped lead pathbreaking research into fertility treatments for women. She and her husband, the physician and surgeon Howard Jones, retired to Norfolk in 1978 and began teaching at Eastern Virginia Medical School, where together they established a clinic and conducted the first in vitro fertilization procedure leading to successful birth in the United States in 1981. The clinic was later expanded in 1983 into the Howard and Georgeanna Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine, named in their honor.

Visitors can learn more about all eight of the 2019 honorees in the free and public exhibition, now on display in the Slover Library Forum through September 28th. To learn more about the program and read full biographies of the honorees, visit www.lva.virginia.gov/public/vawomen/2019.