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James Lovelock, famed UK scientist behind Gaia theory
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Scientist, inventor and author: Influential British scientist James Lovelock poses for pictures in Paris on March 17, 2019. Lovelock, famed for his Gaia hypothesis and pioneering work on climate change, has died at the age of 103, his family announced on Wednesday. (AFP/Jacques Demarthon)
T
he independent British scientist James Lovelock, who has died on his 103rd birthday, was hugely influential for his Gaia theory that Earth is a single self-regulating system -- and later, his dire warnings about climate change.
In a wide-ranging career that lasted more than three quarters of a century, Lovelock worked on viruses, the ozone layer, told NASA there was no life on Mars and helped shape -- even sometimes reluctantly -- the environmental movement.
His ideas were often at odds with conventional wisdom -- generating admiration and sometimes vilification from his peers. He often had to wait for the world to catch up.
The unorthodox scientist, inventor and author worked in a barn-turned-laboratory for decades, though the price for that freedom was a lack of institutional backing.
On the eve of his 101st birthday in 2020, Lovelock said he was enjoying being in lockdown with his wife in southern England as the coronavirus pandemic swept the country.
"I grew up as an only child hardly meeting anyone -- it isn't any great hardship for me," he said, adding that the sunny weather and lack of other people were "maximally desirable".
Despite his declared antisocial tendencies, Lovelock was unfailingly polite and almost impishly charming.
