Three years ago, at a meeting that was held to celebrate his 100th birthday, the scientist James Lovelock was the subject of a rigorous 90-minute interview on stage at Exeter University. The first question from the audience – which included a host of world-leading researchers – was put by a young man. “You are famous for thinking outside the box,” he asked. “How do you do it?” Lovelock sat thoughtfully for a few moments, before replying: “What box?”
The story, recalled by the conservationist Tim Flannery, was typical of a scientist who never accepted the intellectual confines that so many other researchers erect around their studies over the years. Thus the death last week of Lovelock, at the age of 103, robs the world of a true scientific maverick. This was a polymath who never accepted a university-tenured position, although his academic influence was profound. He pioneered work in chemistry, exobiology, virology and atmospheric physics and as one of the originators of the Gaia hypothesis – which holds that our living planet can be viewed as a single biological system – he became a venerated figure in the environment movement. Life shapes the environment and not the other way round, he argued. At the same time, Lovelock also took work from Shell, Hewlett-Packard and the intelligence services. In this way, his original thinking graced industry, the green movement, government and, for good measure, the hunt for life on other worlds.
