A splendid, fearless biography of the ‘gullible genius’ who popularised Gaia theory
long the driveway to James Lovelock’s remote house of Coombe Mill was a warning one might hardly expect amid the tranquil Devon hills: a radiation hazard sign. It was not there simply to deter unwanted snoopers, for what lurked in Lovelock’s private laboratory adjoining his house was truly hair-raising: radioactive sources, TNT and semtex. If there had ever been a fire, Lovelock laughed, “it would’ve blown up the house”.
Having worked for the Medical Research Council at Mill Hill – which produced several Nobel laureates – during the war, Lovelock quit a comfortable academic position to become a freelance inventor and consultant for clients ranging from the Ministry of Defence to Nasa . In the mid-1950s he invented an instrument called the Electron Capture Detector, which allowed substances in the air to be detected with unprecedented sensitivity.
Much of this is well known, but Watts digs deeper to find the source of Lovelock’s contradictory, maverick nature. At its heart was pain and tragedy. He was brought up by his grandparents, after being virtually disowned by his aspiring lower-middle-class mother. Lovelock, meanwhile, idolised his father, Thomas, a former farmworker and somewhat feckless ex-convict who was illiterate until adulthood.
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