James Ephraim Lovelock, best known for the Gaia hypothesis, died on the 26th of July 2022, on his 103rd birthday. In his honour, this episode is going to detail some of his achievements. During our discussion, we’re going to examine his contribution to Martian life detection in the form of a paper published in 1965, as well as outline what the Gaia hypothesis actually refers to…
Sources for this episode: 1) Campbell, N. A., Urry, L. A., Cain, M. L., Wasserman, S. A., Minorsky, P. V. and Reece, J. B. (2018), Biology: a global approach, 11th edition (Global Edition), Harlow, Pearson Education Limited. 2) Hine, R. (2019), A Dictionary of Biology (Oxford Quick Reference), 8th edition, Oxford, Oxford University Press. 3) Lovelock, J. E. (1965), A Physical Basis for Life Detection Experiments. Nature 207(4997): 568-570. 4) Lovelock, J. E. (first published 1979, reprinted 2000), Gaia: A new look at life on Earth (eBook) 5) Lovelock, J. E., James Lovelock (date unknown), Home (online) [Accessed c. 30/07/2022 and 08/11/2022]. 6) Rafferty, J. P., Encyclopaedia Britannica (2022), James Lovelock (online) [Accessed 30/07/2022]. 7) Tao, A., Encyclopaedia Britannica (2022), Lynn Margulis (online) [Accessed 30/07/2022]. 8) Web of Stories- Life Stories of Remarkable People, YouTube (2017), James Lovelock- Detecting life on Mars (10/17) (online) [Accessed 30/07/2022]. 9) Wright, P. and Radford, T., The Guardian (2022), James Lovelock obituary (online) [Accessed 30/07/2022]. 10) Author unknown, BBC (2022), James Lovelock: Influential green thinker dies aged 103 (online) [Accessed 30/07/2022]. 11) Author unknown, NASA (date unknown), SETI: The Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (online) [Accessed 04/11/2022].