John R. Gribbin - He Knew He Was Right: The Irrepressible Life of James Lovelock

PENGUIN BOOKS

HE KNEW HE WAS RIGHT

There is no doubting [Lovelocks] simple goodness and honesty, nor is there any question about his natural scientific genius. These qualities shine through his authorized biography by science writers, John and Mary Gribbin. The impression they give is of a charming, humorous, modest fellow with whom you could happily discuss any topic under the sun, whether you agreed with each other or not John Michell, Spectator

Wonderfully lucid Jonathan Bate, Sunday Telegraph

Gives a good sense of Lovelocks inspirational, independent spirit Roger Highfield, Daily Telegraph

An absorbing new biography Michael McCarthy, Independent

Demonstrates well how Gaia has overcome its main critics to become part of a distinguished historical tradition of serious if controversial scienceNew Scientist

James Lovelock is one of the great thinkers of our time. His ideas and inventions have opened up new insights into our planet and the way it works, and the story behind them will appeal to a very wide audience. I am pleased to recommend this bookChris Rapley, director of the Science Museum, London

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

John and Mary Gribbin are two of todays greatest writers of popular science. Together they have collaborated on many books, including Ice Age, Richard Feynman: A Life in Science and Stardust. John is also the author of bestselling titles including In Search of Schrdingers Cat, Science: A History and Deep Simplicity.

JOHN GRIBBIN AND MARY GRIBBIN

The Irrepressible Life of James Lovelock

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

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First published by Allen Lane 2009

Published in Penguin Books 2009

Copyright John and Mary Gribbin, 2009

The moral right of the authors has been asserted

All rights reserved

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-0-14-195868-2

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All photographs are reproduced by kind permission of James Lovelock.

Even in the illustrious history of the Societys senior medal, first awarded to William Smith in 1831, it is rare to be able to say that the recipient has opened up a whole new field of Earth science study. But that is the case with this years winner, James Lovelock.

Lovelock does not lack for honours after his long and distinguished career in science. As well as more lately being created Companion of Honour and Commander of the Order of the British Empire, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1974, and garnered many awards for his pioneering work in chromatography. Lovelock invented the electron capture detector for gas chromatography an instrument whose exquisite sensitivity has subsequently been central to several important environmental breakthroughs. For example, during the 1960s it enabled the documentation of widespread dissemination of harmful and persistent pesticides like DDT, and later on the technique was extended to the polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Lovelock himself famously used the technique to chart the ubiquitous presence of chlorofluorocarbons CFCs in the atmosphere, triggering the discoveries (by Rowland and Molina) of the harmful influence of CFCs on atmospheric ozone work for which they received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1997. He has also developed instruments for exploring other planets than our own, including those aboard the two Viking craft that went to Mars in 1975, about which I know he will tell us in a moment.

But Lovelock really came to high public prominence for the scientific concept that has captured the imaginations of Earth scientists, biologists and public alike the concept for which we as geologists chiefly honour him today the Gaia Hypothesis and Theory. This view of the planet and the life that lives on it as a single complex system, in some ways analogous to a homeostatically self-regulating organism, is what has given rise to the field we now know as Earth System Science, also the most recently formed of this Societys Specialist Groups.

It is hard to overemphasize the unifying nature of this holistic worldview, which has broken down artificial disciplinary barriers that have existed since the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century when Societies such as this were first formed, and the wonderful richness of insight that has flowed from the multidisciplinarity that has followed. This is especially so in the understanding of feedback loops between life and the environment, especially the dimethyl sulphide cloud albedo surface temperature (CLAW) hypothesis, and the whole idea that life coupled with its material environment regulates planetary temperature and chemical composition over long timescales by influencing rates of silicate weathering.

James Lovelock, it gives me enormous pleasure to reward this towering career with the highest honour the Society can bestow.

In Greek mythology, Chaos was the first thing to appear, a formless void out of which Gaia, the Mother of the Earth, emerges. In modern science, chaos theory describes the behaviour of systems which are so sensitive to conditions that a very small change in one property can lead to a large and unpredictable change in the whole system. As we described in our book Deep Simplicity, stable systems which are insensitive to their conditions are dull and uninteresting places where nothing changes. At the other extreme, completely chaotic systems are so wild and unpredictable that nothing interesting can happen there, either. But right on the edge of chaos, where stability begins to break down, interesting things happen and complex structures emerge.

To highlight how this happens, we can imagine a smoothly flowing river in which there is one large rock sticking out above the surface. The flowing water of the river divides around the rock, and joins up again seamlessly on the other side, so that small chips of wood floating on the water follow these streamlines. If there is rain upstream, the flow of the river will increase, and as it does so it goes through at least three distinct changes.