James Lovelock
- independent scientist, environmentalist, author and
researcher, Doctor Honoris Causa of several universities throughout
the world, he is considered since several decades as a one of the
main ideological leaders, if not the main one, in the history of the
development of environmental awareness.
James Lovelock is still
today one of the main authors in the environmental field. He is the
author of "The Gaia Theory", and "The Ages of Gaia", which
consider the planet Earth as a self-regulated living being, as well
as, more recently his "Homage to GAIA", an autobiography published
in September 2000.
James Lovelock is in favor of the use of clean nuclear energy,
respectful of the environment : read the introduction of James
Lovelock to the book "Environmentalists For Nuclear Energy".
He
supports the Association of Environmentalists For Nuclear Energy (EFN).
LIFE
James Ephraim Lovelock (born July 26, 1919) is an independent
scientist, author, researcher and environmentalist who lives in
England. He is most famous for proposing and popularizing the Gaia
Hypothesis, in which he postulates that the Earth functions as a
kind of superorganism.
He studied chemistry at Manchester University
before taking up a Medical Research Council post at the Institute
for Medical Research in London. In 1948 he received a Ph.D. in
medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Within the United States he has taught at Yale, Baylor University
College of Medicine, and Harvard University.
A lifelong inventor, some of his inventions were adopted by NASA in
their program of planetary exploration. It was while working for
NASA that Lovelock developed the Gaia Hypothesis.
Lovelock is
currently president of the Marine Biological Association, was
elected a FRS in 1974, and in 1990 was awarded the first Amsterdam
Prize for the Environment by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts
and Sciences.
Dr James Lovelock, in looking for the evidence
of
extra-terrestrial life on Mars, observed the Earth as might an
extra-terrestrial, and began to formulate a method of explanation as
to why the Earth appeared therefore to be not so much a planet
adorned with diverse life forms, but a planet which had been
transfigured and transformed by a self-evolving and self-regulating
living system. In view of the nature of this activity,
Earth seemed
to qualify as a living being its own right.
And so the hypothesis
took its initial form. And as the story goes, while on a walk in the
countryside about his home in Wilshire, England, Lovelock described
his hypothesis to his neighbor William Golding (the novelist - eg:
Lord of the Flies), and asked advise concerning a suitable name for
it.
The resultant term "Gaia" - after the Greek goddess who drew the
living world forth from Chaos - was chosen.
However, there was a big
difference between postulating such a grand schemed hypothesis and
having it accepted by the traditional scientific community, and
there remained much research work to be done in order to be able to
more clearly specify the entirety of the processes by which the
modern planetary atmosphere had been evolved and was continuing to
be evolved.
And in this task, in the early years of his further
research concerning the Gaia Hypothesis, Lovelock was supported by
the collaboration of Dr Lynn Margulis, a leading and forward
thinking American microbiologist.
"The entire range of living matter on
Earth from whales to viruses
and from oaks to algae could be regarded as constituting a single
living entity capable of maintaining the Earth's atmosphere to suit
its overall needs and endowed with faculties and powers far beyond
those of its constituent parts...[Gaia can be defined] as a complex
entity involving the Earth's biosphere, atmosphere, oceans, and
soil; the totality constituting a feedback of cybernetic systems
which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on
this planet."
"To what extent is our collective intelligence also a part of
Gaia?
Do we as a species constitute a Gaian nervous system and a brain
which can consciously anticipate environmental changes?"
Lovelock was among the first researchers to sound the alarm about
the threat from the greenhouse effect. His opinion is that
