<
https://theconversation.com/inspiration-mentor-and-a-truly-great-man-tim-flannery-farewells-scientist-james-lovelock-who-has-returned-to-gaia-at-103-187846>
"James Lovelock, scientist and inventor, returned to Gaia on his 103rd
birthday, July 26 2022.
Just three years earlier, I had attended his 100th birthday celebration at
Blenheim Castle, Oxfordshire. There he sat, surrounded by some of the greats of
British science, including the astronomer and ex-president of the Royal Society
Sir Martin Rees, and other rather idiosyncratic thinkers such as the diplomat
Sir Crispin Tickell and the French philosopher Bruno Latour, who had travelled
from overseas to be there.
Lovelock was in rude good health. Later, at the Lovelock Centenary Meeting at
Exeter University, he was the subject of a rigorous one-and-a-half-hour
interview, on stage. The first question from the audience was asked by a young
man. “You are famous for thinking outside the box,” he said. “How do you do
it?”
Lovelock sat thoughtfully for a moment or two, before replying: “What box?”
A man of elfin stature, Lovelock was born in 1919. He began life in a world
where biplanes had recently taken to the skies, and left it as NASA’s
Perseverance Rover was drilling into sedimentary rocks in its search for traces
of life on Mars.
He was delightful, honest and astonishingly candid. His work on air quality
(which preconditioned his thinking to take climate change seriously) began in
London’s air-raid shelters during World War II. He was fascinated with the fact
that in some shelters there was so little oxygen you couldn’t light a
cigarette, yet nobody was having difficulty breathing.
He also mentioned that his sex life was never so vigorous nor varied as it was
during the war, the possibility of being blown to bits at any moment being a
great disinhibitor."
RIP,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
