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Doctor Earth, | Presume

Sven Bellamy
Features Editor

It is amazing how some people seem to achieve so
much within the scope of their lifetime. Such is the case
with a man like James Lovelock. Known primarily as
the founder of the Gaia hypothesis, he is also a med-
ical doctor, chemist, and inventor.

Born as James Ephraim Lovelock on July 26, 1919 in
Letchworth Garden City, UK, he attended Manchester
University, graduating as a chemist in 1941. He began
employment with the Medical Research Council at the
National Institute for Medical Research in London, and
between 1946 and 1951 he worked with the Common
Cold Research Unit at Harvard Hospital in Salisbury,
Wiltshire. 1948 he received a Ph.D. in medicine from
the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine,
and in 1959 he received his doctorate in biophysics
from London University.

In 1954, after receiving the Rockefeller
Traveling Fellowship in Medicine, he moved
to Boston, Massachusetts, moving on to
Yale University in 1958. In 1961 he took on
a full-time position as a professor of chem-
istry at Baylor University College of
Medicine in Houston, Texas, during
which time he worked with NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory. He resigned his
post at Baylor in 1964, and has worked
as an independent scientist since that
time. As an independent, Lovelock has
taken on several associations as visiting
professor with the University of Houston
and also with the University of Reading in the
UK. He still maintains association with the
Marine Biological Association at Plymouth, hav-
ing served as a council member and as the asso-
ciation’s president.

Lovelock has authored more than two hundred
papers in the fields of medicine, biology, Instrument
science, and geophysiology. He has filed more than
fifty patents, mostly for detectors used in chemical
analysis. One of these inventions, the electron capture
detector, has been instrumental in the development of
environmental awareness. The detector itself revealed
for the first time the widespread distribution of pesticide
residues and other harmful chemicals along with the
presence of PCBs in the environment. The electron
capture detector has also, been used by NASA to dis-
cover how nitrous oxide and chlorofluorocarbons are
distributed in the Earth’s upper atmosphere. By using
Lovelock’s invention chemists were able to discover the

holes in the Earth’s ozone layer.

Lovelock, in his biography, says that chemistry and
geophysiology are his first passions. The notion that
organisms on Earth each play a role in shaping the
environment, creating a comfortable climate in which to
live, never ceases to amaze him.

While working for NASA in the late ‘60s he worked
with other scientists who proposed a series of tests be
done on the atmosphere of Mars in order to determine

  
 
  
 
  
  
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
   
  
  
  
  

if life existed on the surface. The intent of focusing on
atmospheric tests was to save on the cost, and risk of
attempting a landing mission.

Lovelock explains that on a planet where life is pres-
ent, organisms both take from and contribute to the
gases in that planet's atmosphere. This results in an
atmosphere composed of many different gases that
are in a state of unbalance. A lifeless planet has a rel-
atively balanced atmospheric chemistry. This reason-
ing appeared to be true during the study of Mars’s

atmosphere. Lovelock and his colleagues compared
the atmosphere of Earth to that of Mars and were sur-
prised at the differences between the two planets.
Mars’s atmosphere is dominated by carbon dioxide,
while the same gas on Earth is a mere trace element.
The condition of Earth’s atmosphere, which is domi-
nated by oxygen, methane, and other reactive gases,
are conditions that would be impossible on a lifeless
planet.

It was the work done with NASA that began
Lovelock’s thinking about the interactions between
organisms on Earth and the atmosphere. In the twenty
years following the Mars atmosphere project, Lovelock
developed the hypothesis that the "Earth is a self-reg-
ulating system able to keep its climate and chemi-
cal composition comfortable for the organisms
that inhabit the planet." That statement was the
foundation of the Gaia Theory.
Lovelock’s research of gas exchange
between the ocean and the atmosphere
led to the discovery that cloud formation
and density depended on the amount of
dimethyl sulphide present in the atmos-
phere. The idea that clouds are formed
over the oceans furthered the Gaia
hypothesis that necessary gas exchange
occurs between ocean and air in order to
maintain an average global temperature.

While conducting the research on atmos-

f pheric gas exchange, Lovelock discovered
w that levels of chlorofluorocarbons in the

atmosphere were rising. There was no count-
» —_er-process within the Gaian system to remove

this gas. A negative side effect, discovered by
Lovelock’s contemporaries, was the discovery of
ozone breakdown in the upper atmosphere.

Especially in the early years, Lovelock received a lot
of criticism around Gaia. His theory really falls back to
the ancient Greeks, or to cultures that have closer ties
to the Earth. The feeling that the Earth has soul—and
humans as a species share a symbiotic relationship
with every other organism on the planet. It is a theory
that binds science and theology, something that west-
ern science lost touch with, the rise of its own religion.

The biggest criticism Lovelock received about his
theory was from neo-Darwinists, who claimed the Gaia
hypothesis was teleological; that is, organisms would
have to have a purpose and a plan in order to achieve
this seeming act of global altruism. Why would all

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