Scientific maverick

From finding the gas responsible for ozone damage to exploration on Mars and the Gaia theory, Letchworth-born James Lovelock has been a key mind in environmental science for decades. At 100 he’s not slowing down

- Johannah Flaherty

James Lovelock’s career has been rich, varied and extraordinary. An author, scientist and environmentalist, he sees himself primarily as an inventor. And rightly so, his early innovations were significant, including a device that led to the discovery of the hole in the ozone layer and another used in NASA’s first mission to Mars. But he is best known, through his many books, for his Gaia hypothesis that the Earth should be considered as one living organism. His predictions about climate change and the future of our planet have drawn praise and cynicism in equal measure among environmentalists and scientists the world over.

Now 100-years-old and still working, it was his early years in the newly created Letchworth Garden City that put him on a path of discovery and investigation. James was born in the town in the summer of 1919 to parents he describes as ‘staunch socialists’. So staunch, his suffragette mother’s political interests drew her to London and James was raised by his grandparents until he was six.

His memories of those early years remain ‘sparkling clear,’ he says. They include his grandparents’ house on Icknield Way and the excitement he felt at seeing the Flying Scotsman arrive at Hitchin station. He remembers playing on Norton Common and walking from pub-free Letchworth to The Three Chimneys in Norton every Sunday with his grandfather. He recalls his memories of the Spirella Building where most of his aunts worked, and how pleased he was to see it still there during a visit to the town in the 1990s. It was a childhood spent among adults.

‘From an early age, I was constantly surrounded by adults,’ he explains. ‘I had very few friends of my own age and would listen in on conversations between adults, who in turn treated me like an adult.’