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The Many Lives of James Lovelock
A splendid, fearless biography of the ‘gullible genius’ who popularised Gaia theory
Having worked for the Medical Research Council at Mill Hill – which produced several Nobel laureates – during the war, Lovelock quit a comfortable academic position to become a freelance inventor and consultant for clients ranging from the Ministry of Defence to Nasa (especially on what became the Viking lander missions of the 1970s that searched for signs of life). In collaboration with the American microbiologist Lynn Margulis, Lovelock shaped these ideas into the Gaia theory, which suggests that the whole planet functions rather like a living organism, stabilised by feedbacks between the biosphere, oceans, atmosphere and geosphere. He initially ridiculed the suggestion that CFC compounds in refrigerants and aerosols, useful as a tracer of atmospheric currents detectable by the ECD, might harm the ozone layer.“Despite his reputation as an independent, contrarian maverick, he was embedded in the military-industrial complex,” writes Watts.
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