James Lovelock
Scientist, inventor and author
James Lovelock, born in 1919, has been an independent scientist for more than forty years and, since 1994, an Honorary Visiting Fellow of Green College, University of Oxford. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1974 and was made a Companion of Honour by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003. In addition, he has received ten international awards for his work as an environmentalist, including the Blue Planet Prize, the Volvo Prize and the Wollaston Medal from the Geological Society in London.
James Lovelock’s most notable scientific work is the Gaia theory, now generally accepted under the name Earth System Science, and the discovery in l972 of CFCs in the atmosphere and their subsequent global monitoring. He is also the inventor of the electron capture detector (ECD), which first alerted us to the widespread distribution of pesticides and PCBs. He has throughout his career as an environmental scientist supported nuclear energy as a preferred source of electricity. Recently, he has been promoting the idea of using ocean pipes as a way of accelerating the transfer of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to the ocean.
James Lovelock is the author of more than 200 scientific papers, distributed almost equally among topics in medicine, biology, instrument and atmospheric science and geophysiology. He has applied for more than 40 patents, mostly for detectors for use in chemical analysis.
He has written five books about the Earth: Gaia: a new look at life on Earth (Oxford University Press, 1979); The Ages of Gaia (WW Norton, 1988); Gaia: the practical science of planetary medicine (Gaia Books, 1991); and an autobiography, Homage to Gaia (Oxford University Press, 2000). His latest book is The Revenge of Gaia (Allen Lane/Penguin 2006).
