James Lovelock: Remembering the Gaia Hypothesis Founder

James Lovelock passed away recently at the age of 103. Find out how his Gaia hypothesis led a generation to a new understanding of the world and our place in it.

James Lovelock was about the age I am now when I first heard about him. In college, I read publications from the Whole Earth Catalog that often mentioned his Gaia hypothesis.

That’s the idea that all of Earth’s living things interconnect in a complex web along with their physical habitats to form a self-regulating ecosphere. The idea earned him the Wollaston Medal from the Geological Society of London and got him elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society.

James Lovelock’s ideas were a huge influence on the environmental movement that arose in the wake of the first Earth Day in 1970. In those days, his idea of a self-regulating planet also resonated with the new images from space that showed humanity the full face of the bright blue Earth against the blackness of space for the first time.

Founder of the Gaia Hypothesis Had Humble Beginnings

The founder of the Gaia Hypothesis came from humble beginnings in the U.K. His father grew up illiterate but then…