What is the Norman D. Jones Science Award?

In the two volumes of his book, Evolution: The Grand Experiment (2009), and many other places online, Dr. Carl Werner has been given credit for being "the recipient of the Norman D. Jones Science Award," among other accolades. In the second volume it is said that he won this award "for his experiment dealing with the food preservative EDTA" and a photograph of a 1977 front-page story about this in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper is included. However, there have been no descriptions or any indications of what this award was, who awarded it, nor any kind of information about it.

Just as others had done before, I tried in vain to pester Google about it, coming up empty as they had. I saw that one gentleman had attempted writing to the publisher, New Leaf Press, with his inquiry but he said that he never heard back from them.

So, what is the Norman D. Jones Science Award?

First of all, according to Linda Lockhart Jones, who wrote that front-page story for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, it was actually called the Norman R. D. Jones Award. A trivial correction, to be sure, but we do want to be as accurate as possible. Nevertheless, this was a regional science fair award given to high school students in Missouri. It was more than 40 years ago that Werner received this award (April 21, 1977), back when he was still a senior at St. John Vianney High School. According to Wikipedia, that is a private, all-male Catholic college preparatory school in Kirkwood, Missouri, in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis. The newspaper ran that front-page story the following day about Werner receiving this "top award of the Greater St. Louis Monsanto/Post-Dispatch Science Fair," which Norman R. D. Jones himself co-founded.

Werner explained that he won this regional high school award for his two-year research project on ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) which, Wikipedia tells me, is a food preservative intended to "prevent catalytic oxidative decoloration." The newspaper reported that he began this project in his parent's basement but the bulk of the research "was carried out in the laboratories of the University of Missouri at St. Louis under the direction of biology Prof. Albert Derby." He also received a four-year renewable scholarship to the University of Missouri Medical School at Kansas City, in addition to a monetary prize from the St. Louis Medical Society. He would also go on to represent St. Louis the following month (May 1977) at the International Science and Engineering Fair in Cleveland.

Impressive, I think, for a high school kid. Nicely done.

References:

Carl Werner, Evolution: The Grand Experiment, 2 vols. (2007; Green Forest, AR: New Leaf Press, 2009).

Linda Lockhart Jones, "Top Award for Study of Additive," St. Louis Post-Dispatch (newspaper), vol. 99, no. 111, April 22, 1977 (pp. 1 and 6A).