James Ephraim Lovelock
(1919-2022), Chemist and ecologistSitter in 4 portraits
Chemist, environmentalist and inventor of the 'electron capture detector' (1958), a device used to measure the accumulation of CFCs in the atmosphere. Lovelock was considered one of the main ideological leaders in the history of the development of environmental awareness. His far-reaching Gaia hypothesis, first put forward in 1972, states that the planet behaves as a self-regulating organism. Lovelock published numerous works on this subject, including Ages of Gaia (1988) and The Vanishing Face of Gaia (2009).
by Michael Gaskell
egg tempera on board, 2011
NPG 6928
by Paul Tozer
bromide fibre print, 25 July 1994
NPG x45758
by Rob Adderley, and Ceri Buckmaster, and Staffan Gnosspelius
currency note, 2009
NPG D48058
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Brian Knights
19 September 2022, 16:42
Jim (he was Jim to everybody who new him during most of his adult life) was a kind man as well as an exceptional scientist. He and wife Helen demonstrated this by taking me into his house in Houston in 1962 after my arrival there and I was joined soon after by Dick Hamilton with whom I subsequently shared a flat. It helped a lot with our finances and we also learnt a lot as well. I remember him explaining the early stages of his development of the Gaia hypothesis to me whilst I was in Houston.
Brian Knights