James Lovelock, Scientific Mind Behind the Gaia Living Earth Theory, Has Died at 103

(LONDON, England) — James Lovelock, the British environmental scientist whose influential Gaia theory sees the Earth as a living organism gravely imperiled by human activity, has died on his 103rd birthday. Lovelock’s family said Wednesday that he died the previous evening at his home in southwest England “surrounded by his family.” The family said his health had deteriorated after a bad fall but that until six months ago Lovelock “was still able to walk along the coast near his home in Dorset and take part in interviews.” Born in 1919 and raised in London, Lovelock studied chemistry, medicine and biophysics in the U.K. and the U.S. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] In the 1940s and 1950s, he worked at the National Institute for Medical Research in London. Some of his experiments looked at the effect of temperature on living organisms and involved freezing hamsters and then thawing them. The animals survived. Lovelock worked during the 1960s on NASA’s moon and Mars programs at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. But he spent much of his career as an independent scientist outside of large academic institutions. Lovelock’s contributions to environmental science included developing a highly sensitive electron capture detector to measure ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere and pollutants in air, soil and water. The Gaia hypothesis, developed by Lovelock and American microbiologist Lynn...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: news