In 1901 he obtained an official appointment of demonstrator to the
Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy, Sir
James Dewar, which he held up to the time of his death. He was elected in due course (1902) to a Fellowship at Clare College where he subsequently became lecturer. For eleven years Jones devoted most of his time to teaching in the university laboratory and to the supervision of the science students of his college. His scientific advice extended to students outside his college, such as
Annie Homer at Newnham College. Beyond this work with students, Jones was one of the most productive British chemists of his day and published more than 60 papers between 1900 and 1912. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Jones had not visited foreign laboratories and even other English Universities. He gained his research experience entirely at Cambridge, working with Dewar and
Fenton. With the latter he carried out his first experimental investigation on the "oxidation of organic acids in the presence of iron" (1900), and in 1904 prepared his own work on the stereochemistry of nitrogen. In 1907 and in 1909 he wrote the section on
stereochemistry for the annual reports of the
Chemical Society. The study of organic nitrogen bases led to his attempt to solve the difficult problem of the constitution and transformations of the
aldol bases derived from the
homologues of
aniline. Meanwhile, Jones was assisting Dewar in very different investigations of the metallic (nickel and iron)
carbonyls. These researches had made Jones familiar with low temperature manipulations and ultimately led to their discovery of
carbon monosulfide. In this way Jones' attention was directed to organic sulphur compounds, particularly
thio-
oxalates, thiomalonates and thiophosphates. His eminence as an investigator was recognised in his election to the
Royal Society in 1912. In the same year he was appointed to the
Royal Commission on Fuel and Engines. ==Mountaineering==