The Hon. Dr Barry Jones is a writer, broadcaster and former Labor member of both the State and Federal parliaments. He was Australia's longest serving Science Minister (1983-90) and served as National President of the Australian Labor Party from 1992 to 2000 and again in 2005-06.

He is the only person to have been elected as a Fellow of all four Australian learned academies: Technological Sciences and Engineering in 1992, the Humanities in 1993, Science in 1996 and Social Sciences in 2003. He was also a member of the Executive Board of UNESCO in Paris (1991-95), Vice-President of the World Heritage Committee (1995-96) and a consultant for the OECD. He now serves on six medical research board and the board of CARE Australia.

In 1998 he became a Living National Treasure and received a John Curtin Medal in 2001. Barry Jones Bay in the Australian Antarctic Territory and Yalkaparidon jonesi, a rare extinct family of marsupials, were named for him.