Jonathan Watts relates the extraordinary life of scientist, engineer, Gaia theorist and spy, Englishman James Lovelock.

James Lovelock is best known as the ‘father’ of the Gaia theory, which claims that the Earth ‘functioned like an organism to maintain a habitable environment’ and that we live within a holistic system in which life does not just adapt to but shapes the environment. Consequently, we, like all living things, play an active part in maintaining the balance that supports life.

Jonathan Watts, however, shows that there were many ‘mothers’ necessary to the birth of this hypothesis, and to its presentation – not just scientists, but also less academic readers. ‘Gaia,’ he writes, ‘was not the monopoly of one man … Like Gaia itself, it is a group effort, a product of relationships.’

In this book, Watts has applied Gaia theory to biography:

the chapters are organised by layers of relationships that made up Lovelock’s life and shaped his thinking … On one hand it tells the story of a brilliant individual who played a central role in some of the great scientific developments of the twentieth century … Yet, at the same time, it challenges the idea of a solitary genius and stresses the importance of interactions – neglectful, manipulative, passionate, loyal, inspiring and resentful.

Many of these important interactions were with the women in Lovelock’s life: the scientists Dian Hitchcock and Lynn Margulis, who each played a vital part in sharing ideas and shaping the Gaia hypothesis into a coherent thesis; and, especially, his first wife, Helen, his ‘gatekeeper and account manager’, who unwillingly tolerated his affairs but, in spite of her own ill health, remained his ‘personal assistant’ and ‘pillar of the family making sure everyone was looked after while [he] travelled for work’. Another significant contributor was Sidney Epton, who worked with Lovelock as ghost writer and editor to make his influential paper for The New Scientist easy and interesting reading for the general public.

So, although Lovelock caused fury, criticism and ‘fierce academic debates’ for unscientifically linking myth with serious research, and because of his ‘purple prose’, Gaia’s influence among the general public spread so widely that it was adopted and adapted by ecologists, ‘cybernetic analysts, eco-modernists, diplomats, New Age gurus, witches and wizards’, and creationists and spiritual groups drawn to the goddess Gaia or to the idea of there being ‘a grand design’ to life on Earth rather than it being the result of Darwinian evolution.

It was the novelist William Golding who suggested the name Gaia to Lovelock, telling him of the Greek Goddess of the Earth – the powerful, sometimes terrifying, mother of all life. Watts doubts whether Gaia would have become so well-known if Lovelock had continued to refer to his theory as describing ‘a cybernetic biological system or a biologically controlled homeostatic system’. Gaia, as Lovelock liked to say, was ‘a good four-letter word’.

Gaia, however, was only one part of Lovelock’s life. It is surprising to read of his work on airborne disease for the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR); on virology and hygiene for Medical Research Council (MRC), where he also worked with radioactive materials until he was warned of the health hazards; his employment by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California to measure the chemical composition of the soil and air on other planets; his relationship with Victor Rothschild of the petrochemical giant Shell, who employed him as a senior consultant; and that he engaged in anti-terrorism operations in Northern Ireland for the British Ministry of Defence. ‘He was never a full-time member of British Intelligence’, but was ‘almost certainly Britain’s longest-serving spy’, with ‘a working relationship with MI5 and MI6 that was to last until well into his nineties possibly until his 100th birthday’.

A number of sensitive questions that Watts asked Lovelock about his work with these various employers (such as whether Lovelock was knowingly involved with biological weapons when working for the MoD) went largely unanswered because Lovelock was still bound by The Official Secrets Act, which he signed in 1941 before being taken on by NIMR. He did, however, state that, ‘In no circumstances would I knowingly harm anyone.’

Lovelock’s most important invention, the electron capturing device (ECD), was the result of a conversation with Archer Martin, ‘the world’s leading gas chromatography expert’, when they were both working for MRC.

Lovelock asked Martin whether he could analyse the blood of hamsters to understand why they alone – of all laboratory mammals – could successfully be reanimated after freezing. The answer came in the form of a challenge. Martin said the sample was too small for his instruments, so he could only examine the rodent if Lovelock invented a more sensitive detector.

Lovelock had for some time been experimenting with an ionising anemometer that he had invented to track air movements. He had been using this

to measure the composition of gases and liquids with a degree of sensitivity that no other scientist on Earth possessed at the time. He did not fully understand how it worked until decades later, when he would talk in hallowed terms of his device’s ‘quantum’ properties and ‘magical’ effectiveness … That instrument was the electron capture device (ECD).

Taking up Martin’s challenge, Lovelock ‘retreated to his lab’ and over the next few years developed two smaller, cheaper ionising detectors that were ‘hundreds of times more sensitive that anything that had existed before’.

He went on to use his ECD for atmospheric analysis, which led, among other important discoveries, to the identification of lead and sulphur in car exhaust and from the burning of fossil fuels, and the spread of atmospheric pollutants around the world, including the increase of CFCs (greenhouse gases) in the atmosphere. And, eventually, to Lovelock’s formulation of the Gaia hypothesis, which, too, changed as he became more and more aware of humans’ effects on the world around us.

Lovelock was a maverick, an inventor, brilliant at chemistry, and although he was hopeless at maths due to dyscalculia, he had a ‘phenomenal memory’. Open-minded and always willing to see an alternative point of view, he became an excellent fixer and problem solver. As one man who worked with him at the Medical Research Council put it:

With Jim here were always ten ideas: nine of them would be too outlandish and impossible but there was always one gem.

Watts notes, however, that he was not comfortable with personal relationships – ‘he could be incredibly tin-eared and inconsiderate of the feelings of those closest to him – and as a parent he was unpredictable. According to his daughter Christine:

He wasn’t a boring old fart. His boundaries of what was permissible were different. My sister and I got used to it. He taught us how to make volcanoes.

By the time he left full-time employment and set up his own laboratory in barn near his house, he was unafraid of working with dangerous substances, including explosives and radioactive materials. When he was in his nineties, and the Science Museum in London considered acquiring his entire laboratory for an exhibition focused on his work, they found ‘there were too many hazards, including radiation, mercury, asbestos, Semtex and just about everything you could possibly imagine’.

One of the most interesting and worrying chapters in this book is based on the relationship between Lovelock and Victor Rothschild. Rothschild clearly valued Lovelock’s expertise in tracing atmospheric pollutants in relation to petroleum products, but it seems that he also wanted to control what Lovelock publicly disclosed about this.

Rothschild, however, was an influential patron, and his contacts in high places put Lovelock in touch with government ministers and with key figures in the intelligence services.

Watts is meticulous in charting Lovelock’s life and work, but basing his biographical method on the Gaia Theory does mean that he jumps back and forth in time as he deals with the important relationships that brought that theory into being. His conclusion, however, that ‘Lovelock was everything that was right and wrong about the twentieth century’, is amply demonstrated, and his summing up of Lovelock’s character seems true:

He was a curious funny kind, dynamic, ambitious, jet-setting exemplar of ‘progress’ who was never afraid of risks … Yet he was also reckless, secretive, occasionally callous, prone to low self-esteem, inclined to exaggerate his own achievements, and seduced by power, praise and knowledge.

Gaia, however, changed the way we look at our world, and Lovelock was the most important figure in its development and its lasting influence on our growing awareness that nature is not just a resource for us to exploit without consequences.

Jonathan Watts The Many Lives of James Lovelock: Science, Secrets and Gaia Theory Canongate 2024 HB 320pp $49.99

Dr Ann Skea is a freelance reviewer, writer and an independent scholar of the work of Ted Hughes. She is author of Ted Hughes: The Poetic Quest (UNE 1994, and currently available for free download here). Her work is internationally published and her Ted Hughes webpages (ann.skea.com) are archived by the British Library.

You can buy The Many Lives of James Lovelock from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW.

You can also check if it is available from Newtown Library.

If you’d like to help keep the Newtown Review of Books a free and independent site for book reviews, please consider making a donation. Your support is greatly appreciated.



Tags: biography, Dian Hitchcock, electron capturing device, Gaia Theory, Helen Lovelock, James Lovelock, Jonathan | Watts, Lynn Margulis, Sidney Epton, Victor Rothschld, William Golding


Discover more from Newtown Review of Books

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.