RIP James Lovelock 103 years old!

[redsturgeon]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... k-obituary

John

[Sorcery]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/27/james-lovelock-obituary

John

I found him quite inspirational as a student in the mid 70s. A lot of people seemed afraid of his ideas.

[Mike4]

Very sad loss to humanity. I remember reading one of his books about his Gaia hypothesis back in the early 80s and being deeply impressed by the whole idea.

Looking at his Wikipedia page there is reams of interesting stuff to read, and this seems a good example to quote:

"On 8 May 2012, he appeared on the Radio Four series The Life Scientific, talking to Jim al-Khalili about the Gaia hypothesis. On the programme, he mentioned how his ideas had been received by various people, including Jonathan Porritt. He also mentioned how he had a claim for inventing the microwave oven. He later explained this claim in an interview with The Manchester Magazine. Lovelock said that he did create an instrument during his time studying causes of damage to living cells and tissue, which had, according to him, "almost everything you would expect in an ordinary microwave oven". He invented the instrument for the purpose of heating up frozen hamsters in a way that caused less suffering to the animals, as opposed to the traditional way which involved putting red hot spoons on the animals' chest to heat them up. He believed that at the time, nobody had gone that far and made an embodiment of an actual microwave oven.[29] However, he did not claim to have been the first person to have the idea of using microwaves for cooking.[11]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock