April 30, 1937 to August 5, 2007
Priscilla was born to Priscilla Anne Mullin and William L. Carney in Malden, Massachusetts on April 30, 1937. She graduated from Melrose High School in Melrose, Massachusetts in 1954. Her father was the head of the English Department and her mother a substitute mathematics teacher at that school. She earned a B.A., cum laude, from Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts in 1958 with a major in chemistry. At Wheaton she supplemented her scholarship money by working for the college food service. She also served as editor of the Wire, Wheaton’s student newspaper. She subsequently earned an M.S. degree in chemistry in 1960 at Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania where her thesis dealt with the kinetics of electrophilic aromatic halogenation. She then worked for several years in the Boston, Massachusetts area at the basic research laboratory of a major chemical company. Her work there with hydrocarbon swollen polymers as a safe method for transporting flammable liquids ultimately led to the development of napalm. She also studied the use of stannous fluoride salts in dentifrices as a tooth decay retardant.
When, in the early 1960s, she told the company that she was going to the University of Wisconsin to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry, she was told that she would not have a job there when she completed the degree because company policy at that time did not permit the hiring of female Ph.D.- level scientists. At the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Priscilla was one of two women in an entering class or over 100 graduate students. She worked under the direction of Professor Robert West on the polylithiation of acetylenes and toluene and was the first person to prepare and characterize the tetralithium derivative of propyne, C3Li4. (Robert West, Priscilla A. Carney, and I . C. Mineo, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 1965, 87, 3788). She earned her doctorate in chemistry from the University of Wisconsin in 1968.
While in Madison she met and married her husband of nearly forty years, Paul. They have two children, a son Kevin, a daughter Anne Carmel Martinez, and three grandchildren, Trent Fleming, Kevin Paul Jones, and Jessica Lea Jones.
Priscilla accompanied Paul to Denton, Texas in 1968 when he accepted a teaching position at the then North Texas State University. Other colleges in the area stated that they could not hire her because of nepotism considerations. She sought positions at many companies in the north Texas area and usually was told, “We’re sorry, but you are over-qualified for the position we are trying to fill.” After the children were grown and attending school, Priscilla served as a research associate and a temporary adjunct professor in the Chemistry Department of the University of North Texas, teaching for many years in the freshman chemistry program. Because of the difficulties she faced as a female chemist early in her career she wished to establish a scholarship for women studying chemistry, the Priscilla Carney Jones Scholarship. The Scholarship, to be awarded both on the basis of need and academic success, intends to support an undergraduate woman entering her junior or senior year in the study of chemistry or a related area.
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