James Lovelock: In Search of Gaia

by John Gribbin, Mary Gribbin

In 1972, when James Lovelock first proposed the Gaia hypothesis--the idea that the Earth is a living organism that maintains conditions suitable for life--he was ridiculed by the scientific establishment. Today Lovelock's revolutionary insight, though still extremely controversial, is recognized as one of the most creative, provocative, and captivating scientific ideas of our time. James Lovelock tells for the first time the whole story of this maverick scientist's life and how it served as a unique preparation for the idea of Gaia.

Drawing on in-depth interviews with Lovelock himself and unprecedented access to his private papers, John and Mary Gribbin paint an intimate and fascinating portrait of a restless, uniquely gifted freethinker. In a lifetime spanning almost a century, Lovelock has followed a career path that led him from chemistry, to medicine, to engineering, to space science. He worked for the British secret service and contributed to the success of the D-Day landings in World War II. He was a medical experimenter and an accomplished inventor. And he was working with NASA on methods for finding possible life on Mars when he struck upon the idea of Gaia, conceiving of the Earth as a vast, living, self-regulating system.

Deftly framed within the context of today's mounting global-warming crisis, James Lovelock traces the intertwining trajectories of Lovelock's life and the famous idea it brought forth, which continues to provoke passionate debate about the nature and future of life on our planet.

Genres: Ecology, Nonfiction, Science, Environment

272 pages, Hardcover

First published April 21, 2009

About the author

John R. Gribbin is a British science writer, an astrophysicist, and a visiting fellow in astronomy at the University of Sussex. His writings include quantum physics, human evolution, climate change, global warming, the origins of the universe, and biographies of famous scientists. He also writes science fiction.

Reviews

[Ariadna73 · Rating 5 out of 5]

James Lovelock: in search of Gaia is the biography of a scientific that at this very moment is 91 years old. He is the one who put together the hypothesis of Gaia. Gaia; (for those who have lived under a rock) is the idea of the earth being not only a place where we live; but a living organism itself. We; humans happen to be only part of the many bugs that this organism has to deal with; and it gets sick as any other organism does.

Lately; for example it has caught a fever; called by us the global warming; but do not worry; Gaia has antibodies and it will defend itself again all those nasty things that are bugging her. The only problem is that she might get rid of some living forms on her surface (such as animals and; ejem; human beings) and since -generally speaking- we do not want to die (as a species or as individuals); we need to figure out how to help her so she does not have to shake her bowels very hard killing us in the process. We seem not to be doing a very good job at it; but this man is already retired (only since he was 75 years old -that is a lot of life work!-) and looking forward for a quiet and peaceful exit from this chaotic world. It is up to us to see what we can do to clean up all the mess we have created; so our children have a place where to live a decent life.

[Mike Dettinger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good biography of the inventor of much highest end monitoring instrumentation for trace constituents in the atmosphere and, oh by the way, inventor of the Gaia hypothesis that the biosphere acts as one (without underlying plan or thought) to maintain live able conditions on the earth on geologic time scales. Underrated (given how hard it is to find in bookstores), I'd say

[James Elkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read. The inventor of the electron capture detector (ECD), which I used during my career, details his work on the Gaia Hypothesis as told to John Gribbin. I really like the photo of the original ECD.