James Ephraim Lovelock is a British chemist.  He invented the electron capture gas chromatographic detector, which detects chloroflurocarbons in the atmosphere and can measure pesticides; most famously, Lovelock also developed the Gaia hypothesis.

Lovelock was born in Letchworth Garden City in England in 1919.  He earned a chemistry degree from Manchester University and then received a Ph.D. in medicine from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.  Lovelock worked at both Harvard and Yale Universities, was a professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, and worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA.

While experimenting with life-detection systems for use on Mars, Lovelock and his associates came up with the Gaia hypothesis, which opposes the traditional idea that life on the earth adapted to the earth's planetary conditions as they both evolved their separate ways.  Giving emphasis instead to the process of coevolution, the Gaia hypothesis asserts that the earth itself is alive and can be considered a system that operates and changes by feedbacks of information between its living and non-living components.  The message of this hypothesis is that the health of the earth and the health of its inhabitants are tightly interlinked.

At the present time, Lovelock privately consults from his home near Launceston, Cornwall.  He has written articles on a wide range of subjects, holds several honorary degrees, and has been named a Commander of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth.

What is Gaia?  By James Lovelock