Cambridge University Press
Advertisement
HERE鈥橲 something for the archive: 鈥淭he New Scientist one seems to have stirred up some interest including an amazing number of crank letters of a gentle and non-aggressive kind,鈥� wrote the late independent scientist and polymath James Lovelock, in a letter to biologist Lynn Margulis.
The 鈥渃ranks鈥� were responding to an article in this magazine, dated 6 February 1975. In it, Lovelock presented the idea and world view of Earth as a self-regulating system, the Gaia hypothesis, to a wider audience.
The article worked. It led to Lovelock鈥檚 first book, 1979鈥檚 , an important first step in taking the concept beyond scholarly halls to a broader public.
The letter is one of 268 pieces of previously unpublished correspondence in an edited collection spanning 1970 to 2007. Writing Gaia: The scientific correspondence of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis charts the inside story of a long-running collaboration that gave birth to one of most influential environmental ideas in the modern world. The letters document the duo鈥檚 efforts to win over opponents and to amass enough evidence to move the Gaia hypothesis from idea to theory.
While many readers will be drawn to the book for insights about Lovelock, who died last month aged 103, Margulis is an equally fascinating intellect and strong personality. She was renowned for her work on eukaryotes and symbiosis.
The letters offer a glimpse into how much she moulded Lovelock鈥檚 first scientific paper on Gaia, published in 1972.
But they don鈥檛 offer any ground-breaking gotchas. For example, we already knew that the author William Golding suggested borrowing the name of the Greek goddess of the Earth, Gaia, for the theory, which Lovelock recounts in one letter to Margulis. As with any correspondence, there is also a fair slice of everyday life, from him moaning about the Boston postal service to her complaining about his ever-changing phone number.
Overall, much will only appeal to academics who are interested in the details of how the two merged their understanding of atmospheric science and biology, how they got papers published in certain journals and how they gradually won over critics.
Yet there is something for a general reader, too. Alongside insights into how the two minds collaborated on a vital idea, there is human interest in watching how exchanges swing from warm and intimate to quarrelsome and sarcastic at points.
A nadir comes in 1981, when Lovelock reports a 鈥渂ad few days鈥� after Margulis publicly criticised his book. She shoots back, asking 鈥渨hat would our relationship be worth if I weren鈥檛 entirely straight with you鈥�. Happily for us, despite their differences, they kept writing for decades.
