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Lovelock was born in Letchworth Garden City. He studied chemistry at Manchester University before taking up a Medical Research Council post at the Institute for Medical Research in London.
In 1948 he received a Ph.D. in medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Within the United States he has taught at Yale, Baylor University College of Medicine, and Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and a member of the Ivy League. It was founded on September 8, 1636 by a vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, making it the oldest post-secondary s.
A lifelong inventor, he created inventions of which some were adopted by NASAThe National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA (established 1958) is the government agency responsible for the United States of America's space program and long-term general aerospace research. A civilian organization, it conducts (or oversees) re in its program of planetary exploration. It was while working for NASA that Lovelock developed the Gaia Hypothesis.
Lovelock worked for NASA on the MarsMars can refer to different things: Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. Mars was the god of war in Roman mythology. Mars, Incorporated is a confectioner, and the Mars bar is the name of a candy bar they produce. Mars, the Bringer of War" is a movement Viking programNASA's Viking program consisted of two unmanned space missions to Mars, Viking 1 and Viking 2. Each mission had a satellite designed to photograph the surface of Mars from orbit, and to act as a communication relay for the Viking lander that each mission spacecraft project during the 1960sCenturies: 19th century 20th century 21st century Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s Years: 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 Events and trends The 1960s was a turbulent decade of change around. While working with NASA he determined that the Martian atmosphere was in a stable condition, very little oxygenOxygen is the chemical element in the periodic table that has the symbol O and atomic number 8. The element is very common, found not only on Earth but throughout the universe. Molecular oxygen (O, often called free oxygen on Earth is thermodynamically un, methaneProperties General Name Methane Lewis Structure: H | H-C-H | H Chemical formula C H Formula weight 16. 04 amu Synonyms Marsh gas; Methyl hydride CAS number 74-82-8 Phase behavior Melting point 90. 5 °C) Boiling point 111 K (-162°C) Triple point 90. 48°C), and hydrogenhydrogen helium H Li Full table General Name, Symbol, NumberHydrogen, H, 1 Chemical series nonmetals Group, Period, Block 1 (IA), 1 , s Density, Hardness 0. 0899 kg/m3, NA Appearance colorless Atomic properties Atomic weight 1. 00794 amu Atomic radius (ca and an overwheming abundance of carbon dioxide. This was indicative of the absence of life on the planet. NASA ignored his advice and went to Mars anyway to search for evidence of life and found none.
Lovelock invented the Electron Capture Detector .
Lovelock is currently president of the Marine Biological Association , was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1974, and in 1990 was awarded the first Amsterdam Prize for the Environment by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. An independent scientist, inventor, and author, Lovelock works out of a barn-turned-laboratory in Cornwall.
Lovelock was among the first researchers to sound the alarm about the threat of global warming from the greenhouse effect. In 2004 he caused a sensation when he broke with many fellow environmentalists by pronouncing that "Only nuclear power can now halt global warming." In his view, nuclear energy is the only realistic alternative to fossil fuels that has the capacity to fulfill the large scale energy needs of mankind while reducing greenhouse emissions.