THE GAIA GUY

See Also: THE CANNIBAL DEAN; MEDICAL RESEARCH The Francis Crick Institute, The National Institute for Medical Research; REFRIGERATION Self

James Lovelock (1919-2022) was born into a working-class South London family. He attended Strand Grammar School but his family's financial circumstances meant that he could not afford to go to university.

Lovelock secured an apprenticeship with a photographic business. His employer, Humphrey Desmond Murray, appreciated that the youth was someone who had intellectual potential. The man not only encouraged him to acquire an academic education but also stated that he would pay his course fees. However, in addition, Mr Murray declared that as soon as Lovelock received his degree he would be sacked since the firm could not afford to pay graduates.

By attending night classes at Birkbeck College, Lovelock was able to eventually acquire a degree in chemistry. Subsequently, he was to state that he had probably learnt more science from his photographic job than he had from his undergraduate studies. This was because the former had exposed him to a far wider range of techniques than the latter had.

The youth was a keen walker. He was given to manufacturing home-made explosives. These he used to blow up anything that he regarded as being an unnecessary obstacle to himself and his fellow hikers.

Lovelock won a scholarship to the University of Manchester. Subsequently, the National Institute for Medical Research hired him as a bacteriologist. He attributed his appointment in part to his having had elocution lessons. These had largely smoothed away his South London accent.

The Institute kept stocks of blood. After 30 days, if the fluid had not been used, it was thrown away. During a time of food rationing, Lovelock regarded this practice as being wasteful. He took to taking home some of the expired sang and mixing it with dried eggs. He found the resulting dish to be palatable .

An atmosphere of intellectual freedom prevailed within the Institute. He was told that he could do what he liked so long as it was good science. A research group was using hamsters to culture a particular type of cell in. As part of the process, the body temperature of the creatures was lowered so that they went into deep hibernation. The technique for reviving them involved placing heated spoons over their hearts. This burned their flesh. Lovelock regarded the procedure as being cruel. He decided to try to render the practice redundant. He borrowed a magnetron from the Royal Navy. Around this, he built a microwave into which the chilled rodents were placed for thawing.

In 1948, while Lovelock was working on the common cold, he devised a measurement device that used radioactivity to measure air currents. Subsequently, he enhanced its technology so that by 1957 it had become the electron capture detector. This could detect pollutants in the air and pesticides in the environment. In 1974 Mario J. Molina and Frank Rowland used the apparatus to prove that there were C.F.C.s in the ozone layer of the stratosphere.

With time, Lovelock concluded that the comfortable life that he had at the Institute was an instance of being on tramlines to the grave . The detector had given him a reputation for being able to create small, effective instruments. In 1961 N.A.S.A. invited him to work at its Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California to devise equipment first for the lunar mission and then for the Mars ones. He split his time between the United States and Wiltshire.

In 1965 he saw data about the atmospheres of Mars and Venus that had been generated by infrared measurements that had been made from the Pic du Midi observatory in France. Lovelock appreciated that both of the planets gas envelopes were dominated by CO₂. Therefore, he told N.A.S.A. that there would be no life on Mars.

The scientist realised that, if Mars and Venus were effectively dead planets, the Earth's atmosphere must be being regulated in some manner. The mechanism would ensure that any species that fouled its environment would decrease the chances of its offspring surviving and so risk extinction. At the time, he was sharing an office with the cosmologist Carl Sagan. His colleague was dismissive of the idea that life was the means by which the world's gaseous envelope was regulated.

The Briton's concept was fleshed out by the American biologist Lynn Margulis. She had recently become the first former Mrs Sagan. Lovelock's Wiltshire neighbour the novelist William Golding suggested that Gaia, the name of the Greek goddess of the Earth, would be an appropriate moniker for this system. The idea, in its fuller form, became part of the ecological discourse. Climatologists embraced it. However, some evolutionary biologists deeply resented the fact that natural selection had no role in the model. Geologists also proved to be resistant to it. His work was taken up by some New Age thinkers. However, the researcher preferred to keep his distance from the movement.

In 1974 Lovelock was elected to be a Fellow of the Royal Society. This reflected the standing that he had achieved amongst his peer group. The income that his inventions generated enabled him to be an independent, trans-disciplinary scientist. He was able to buy a house in rural Devon.

Over the course of the decades some of his old habits had been retained. There is a story that he disliked a rose bed in the property's garden. The normal action that would be taken would have been to remove the bed by digging up the plants that were growing in it. His solution was to build a home-made bomb that he placed under a portion of the feature. This he exploded thereby removing it.

Location: The National Institute for Medical Research, The Ridgeway, Mill Hill, NW7 1AA

Strand Grammar School, Elm Park Road, SW2 2EF

Website: www.jameslovelock.org

David Backhouse 2024