Janet Gretchen Jones was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Vero Beach, Florida. She was an undergraduate student at Swarthmore College, where she was a Merit scholar. Jones was a graduate student at California Institute of Technology, where she worked alongside Fred Anson on ligand bridging in charge transfer reactions. Robert Osteryoung was a Visiting Associate in the Department of Chemistry at Caltech at this same time. After marrying, Janet and Robert Osteryoung both continued to carry out research in the field of electroanalytical chemistry.