Public Outreach
Since 1986, Jones has given many interviews to the press on behalf of the US Geological Survey following significant earthquakes in southern California. In a 2004 profile of her, Tom Jordan of the USGS was quoted as saying, “Lucy provides Southern California — and the nation — with a very calming voice and an authoritative voice to the public’s inquiry in disaster.” He also said that her high public profile may make her “one of the most effective chairs of CSSC ever”. Public perception of Jones as a voice of calm and reassurance has been attributed, in part, to an incident following the 1992 Joshua Tree Earthquake in which she answered press questions while holding her sleeping child in her arms. In a 2011 interview, Jones denied the story that she asked the press to be quiet so as not to wake her son. She also expressed some regret that she became a symbol that “women can have it all”.
Jones, a fourth-generation resident of southern California, currently lives in Pasadena, California. She is married to a fellow seismologist, Egill Hauksson, and they have two sons.
Read more about this topic: Lucy Jones
Famous quotes containing the word public:
“Among all the world’s races, some obscure Bedouin tribes possibly apart, Americans are the most prone to misinformation. This is not the consequence of any special preference for mendacity, although at the higher levels of their public administration that tendency is impressive. It is rather that so much of what they themselves believe is wrong.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)