R. Victor Jones matriculated into the University of California, Berkeley and entered the lab of Walter Knight, where he worked in the new field of nuclear magnetic resonance. He continued into graduate school at Berkeley and worked in Carson Jeffries's lab, where his thesis work dealt with electron transport in a molecular afterglow. As he was finishing his thesis work, William Shockley began an aggressive recruitment of Jones until he finally accepted Shockley's offer of a job at the new Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory. Shockley believed semiconductors were the wave of the future, and he espoused diffused-base technology. Jones was put to work on the four-layer diode. From the outset, lab work was compartmentalized and Shockley frequently changed the goals of the lab. Uncomfortable in the high-stress atmosphere of the lab and wanting to work with his primary interest, electromagnetic theory, Jones decided after only two years to look for work in the academy, ultimately acceptaing a position at Harvard University. He spent almost fifty years there, teaching electronics.