Born on September 11, 1923 in Forest Hills, New York, the late Patricia Jones Edgerton was the daughter of W. Alton Jones, who created the W. Alton Jones Foundation in 1944. She graduated with an AB from Bryn Mawr College in 1943 and went on to become a research assistant in hematology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. In 1947 Edgerton completed her MA in Chemistry while teaching at Bryn Mawr College.

For nearly a quarter of a century Edgerton chaired the W. Alton Jones Foundation which, under her leadership, focused its philanthropy mainly on the preservation of global biodiversity and the prevention of nuclear war. When the Jones Foundation was dissolved and then reconstituted as three separate entities in 2001-02, Edgerton and her daughter, Diane Edgerton Miller, co-founded one of those three entities, the Blue Moon Fund.

Edgerton died on March 16, 2010, after a long battle with Alzheimer’s Disease.

Further Reading: “Patricia Edgerton” (Legacy.com).