James Lovelock
James Ephraim Lovelock CH CBE FRS is an independent scientist, environmentalist and futurist who lives in Devon, England. He is best known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis, which postulates that the Earth functions as a selfregulating system.
James Lovelock was born in Letchworth Garden City in Hertfordshire, England, to working class parents who were strong believers in education. Nell, his mother, started work atin a pickle factory. His father, Tom, had served six months hard labour for poaching in his teens and was illiterate until attending technical college. The family moved to London where Lovelocks dislike of authority made him, by his own account, an unhappy pupil at Strand School. Lovelock could not afford to go to university after school, something which he believes helped prevent him becoming overspecialised and aided the development of Gaia theory. He worked at a photography firm, attending Birkbeck College during the evenings, before being accepted to study chemistry at the University of Manchester, although he could only pay for two years of the threeyear course. Lovelock worked at a Quaker farm before a recommendation from his professor led to him taking up a Medical Research Council post, working on ways
Source: Wikipedia