Who funded Isaac Newton’s pioneering research where he laid down the foundations of physics? Which funding agency paid for Charles Darwin’s trip aboard HMS Beagle that eventually led him to propose the theory of evolution? Which university supported Albert Einstein when he produced four breakthrough papers, famously known as the annus mirabilis papers (Latin annus mīrābilis, “miracle year”), that changed physics forever?
The answer in all these cases is the same. These genius gentlemen supported themselves while carrying out the breakthrough research. While Einstein joined Princeton University after coming to America, his research on photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, and special relativity was done when he was working at the Swiss Patent Office. (He used to finish his office work quickly so that he could devote the remaining time to think about physics.)
In the old days, that was how research was done – by independent scientists who supported themselves by any means available and carried out the research in their spare time. Things began to change in the last century as universities and research institutes began to employ scientists and it became a standard career path. Independent scientists today are a rare and endangered species; the Wiki page lists a handful of them who have made their mark. Notable among them is British scientist James Lovelock.
Before we go further, a detour, a deviation, a departure, a fork, a highway, a bypass, a roundabout, a left turn, a restaurant 50 m ahead, a sandwich, and a coffee.
Narrator : The meandering author meanders, as is his wont. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to him, in the 3 5/7th dimension, an unfortunate reader shouts and screams, railing at the unjust Book Gods who have ordered him to read every word the author types as part of his punishment. The 3 5/7th dimension is home to the souls of readers convicted of ‘crime against books.’ Some common crimes include dog-earing book pages instead of using bookmarks. Grave crimes include rating a book on Goodreads without reading it. Graver crimes include arguing about a book on Goodreads without reading it. Gravest crimes include writing a two page book review on Goodreads without reading it.
The 5 3/8th dimension is similarly reserved for ‘crime against movies’ while the 7 2/9th dimension deals with ‘crime against food.’
James Lovelock was a man of strong opinions and there is a fair chance that you will strongly disagree with him on certain points if you read any of his books or watch his videos on YouTube. Even if that is the case, chances are also high that you will gain something useful as well. So ignore the things that you disagree with and take what is useful.
In my own case, I have become such a sucker for gaining useful information that I will read/watch literally anything if there is a small chance of getting something useful out of it. So if I am watching a flat-earther video, that does not mean I think the Earth is flat. It simply means I find the video useful in some way. Maybe it’s good comedy material.
Some of the major achievements of James Lovelock
- Invented the electron capture detector (ECD)
- Using ECD, he made the first measurements of chlorofluorocarbons in air that led to the discovery of ozone layer depletion in upper atmosphere
- Worked as a consultant for many organisations and companies including NASA, JPL, HP
- Worked as a consultant for MI5. The Sunday Times described him as ‘Q in James Bond movies’
- Proposed the Gaia hypothesis along with microbiologist Lynn Margulis
- Recipient of many honorary doctorates and awards including Fellow of the Royal Society and the Blue Planet Prize
Lovelock was born in England in 1919. In 1923, when he was four years old, his father gave him an electrical toy as a Christmas present that had bells, bulbs, and wires. He asked everyone in his family, and the postman, as to why you need two wires to carry electricity. Why not have just one like the one carrying gas or water? No one could answer his query and Lovelock believes that it was at this point that he decided to become a scientist – to find out answers for himself.
The childhood that Lovelock describes is reminiscent in some ways of the atmosphere described in Charles Dickens’ novels; what Lovelock describes as ‘Victorian poverty.’ The constant coal burning in London at the time deposited a layer of soot on all surfaces. The coal smoke produced some of the worst smogs. As a child, Lovelock hated school but loved science. He learned most of his science from books borrowed from the Brixton library. One of his childhood heroes was the famous biologist J. B. S. Haldane.
After finishing school, Lovelock got a job as an apprentice in a photography firm in Brixton. The hands on experience gained there in chemistry would prove invaluable later on. According to him, the time spent at the company taught him more about practical chemistry than a lifetime at the university could have done. He also enrolled as a student at an evening college.
After graduation, Lovelock joined the Medical Research Council (MRC) in London where he stayed for twenty years. It was 1941 and the work done at MRC was directed towards the war effort. One of the problems that Lovelock worked on was how to prevent the spread of common cold amongst the American aircrew. The reason that such a simple sounding issue was so important was because the aircrew was flying B-17 bombers. To fly an unpressurised fighter plane at 20000+ feet in enemy territory was difficult enough; if the pilot had a bad cold it was almost impossible for him to function while wearing an oxygen mask. The research continued after the war and was later published in the British Medical Journal, and one of the recommendations was to use disposable tissues instead of handkerchiefs, as was customary then.
Wartime operations involved strict deadlines and Lovelock had to work under pressure. He would often get requests like, “Can you devise some means of detecting heat radiation under battle conditions?…I need your answer by tomorrow for an urgent meeting in Whitehall.” (Lovelock managed to solve the problem in time, justifying the nickname ‘Q.’) In those days, the tradition in most British labs was that if you require a certain type of instrument, you make it yourself.
In 1961, Lovelock received a letter from NASA to join a party of scientists who were about to explore the Moon. This was a dream come true for Lovelock who had been passionate about astronomy since childhood. He also received an offer from the University of Houston for a post of visiting professor.
We are hyper connected all over the world today. It is hard to imagine the difficulties the space engineers faced while designing the first space missions. Lovelock provides some fascinating insights.
It is eerie to think that even a digital watch would have amazed Buzz Aldrin and the astronauts who first walked on the Moon. The computer that landed their lunar module had no more capacity than that of the tiny chip that now oversees the operation of your washing machine.
Invention of the ECD
The first prototype of the ECD was made on the kitchen table of Lovelock’s home, with electronic components purchased from vendors in downtown London. The ECD uses a gas like nitrogen which is bombarded with electrons. Nitrogen is used because it has a low excitation energy which means that it is easy to knock off an electron from a nitrogen molecule. If you have a positive cathode nearby, this establishes a steady current – the background current. If there is an impurity present say, a DDT molecule, one electron is removed per DDT molecule and the background current decreases. Measuring this decrease in current, as little as 200,000 molecules of DDT can be detected, which is about one tenth of a femtogram of DDT. In fact, ECD was used to measure the DDT in environment and this eventual led to the laws against its use in many countries.
The Ozone War
The Great Smog of London in 1952 killed 4000 people. This led to the passing of Clean Air Act 1956, which solved the smog problem. However, Lovelock began to notice a dense haze during summer days in England and was curious about its origin.
His meteorologist friends has nothing to offer in explanation. By late 1960s, Lovelock’s daughter Christine was regularly measuring the haze density using a hand held Sun photometer at their home Bowerchalike.
Lovelock thought about which pollutants might cause this and a strong candidate was chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), that were abundantly used in aerosol cans and refrigerators at the time. He measured CFC content in air at Bowerchalike and Adrigole in far western Ireland. At both places, CFCs were abundant when the air was hazy. Later, a larger study proved abundance of CFCs in air in Europe, including places in clean Atlantic air. If the pollution was so wide spread, how far did it go? Lovelock decided to find out.
The National Environment Research Council (NERC) was going to send a research team to Antarctica aboard the Shackleton. Lovelock asked for a small grant to measure dimethyl sulphide, methyl iodide, and CFCs aboard the research ship. The academic review committee rejected his proposal. Not only was it rejected unanimously, but there was also a warning that such bogus projects should not be presented to the committee in future. The reason why they did not believe in the proposal was that a senior chemist on the committee did not believe that anyone could measure chlorofluorocarbons at an accuracy of parts-per-trillion level, as claimed by Lovelock. Fortunately, the staff members at NERC thought that the project was good and were prepared to pay for the fare. The equipment cost was generously borne by Mrs. Lovelock who broke out the grocery money.
Thus, the research that eventually led to the discovery of depletion of Ozone layer was carried out at the cost of few hundred pounds. Molina, Rolland, and Crutzen received Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the discovery of Ozone layer depletion in 1996.
After the discovery, members of the committee that had rejected Lovelock’s proposal themselves received generous funding to monitor the CFCs. Irony must have committed suicide. Lovelock’s scathing comment on this : ‘grants are a form of welfare.’
Why Do Independent Science?
While it’s true that most of the experimental research done today requires well-equipped labs, Lovelock believed that there is a place for an independent scientist even today. He lists several benefits of being an independent scientist. For instance, when you apply for a research grant, it is mandatory to mention the final goals that will be achieved. But if we are being truthful, science is about exploring the unknown. When you are independent, you can explore the path the the research naturally leads you to, instead of worrying the goals set before the funding committee. This also means that you are freed from the tedious bureaucracy, where too many people in the bureaucratic chain who haven’t the faintest idea of your goals try to control your actions.
Lovelock worked as a consultant for companies like HP and Shell and set up a lab in a thatched cottage at his home in Bowerchalke. Transmodulator – a crucial component of the instruments carried to Mars in 1975 by the Viking landers was invented by Lovelock in this small cottage. JPL took a patent on this device and gave him three awards for it.
Lovelock hated specialisation. As a professional scientist, you get caught up in the narrow field of your research and often, there are barriers across disciplines. Physicists won’t talk to chemists, biologists will hate them both, and the mathematicians will look down upon all of them from their offices on the 162nd floor of the Burj Khalifa. Lovelock worked at the intersection of many disciplines. He was an excellent chemist, with a PhD in medicine. He also loved biology. Being trained in old school, he could blow glass to make glass apparatus, he could braze and weld metal, and he could use lathes and milling machines. Being an independent scientist gave him the freedom to move freely across disciplines.
This freedom also manifested itself in everyday research activities. For instance, in a proper laboratory, a scientist would set up the experiment, vary the parameters, and carefully note down all the variables and their effects, plot graphs, analyse and decide the next step. In his thatched cottage, Lovelock would be too impatient to do all that. He would simply connect the apparatus to see what happens. According to him, it is a mistake to do the first experiments too carefully. You should just join up what you have, do the experiment, learn from it, and then design a proper scientific experiment.
Lovelock used to publish in Nature regularly when he was working at the MRC. When he started working as an independent scientist, he submitted a paper to Nature that was rejected immediately because they did not accept papers that had a ‘home address.’ Later, they realised who he was and began to accept his papers again.
Lovelock believed that pioneering scientific advances come mostly from individuals, not from teams. ‘I was at my best alone, thinking,’ he says. By choosing an independent path, he was able to use his natural talents in the best way possible.
There is a reason why I reviewed this book at length. The topic used to be right up my alley. And the reasons why I left research overlap to a great extent with experiences described in the book.
Doing professional science has become a game of ‘survival of the fittest.’ Everyday, I see extremely talented scientists who have contributed immensely, worrying about securing a position or fretting over their grant applications. Most universities, institutes, and funding agencies evaluate the credibility of scientists on the number of publications they have; hence the adage, ‘publish or perish.’ Remember the three gentlemen I mentioned in the first paragraph of this article? I doubt if they would be able to secure a position today if they were to apply as fresh applicants with no publications.
A scientist in today’s world is caught between a rock and a hard place, with a porcupine on right and a tarantula on left. It’s partly the reason why I left research. Another reason was also that I was not very good at doing science. I would give myself a B- as a scientist, and I am being generous here. (‘Love yourself’ and all that codswallop!)
My real passion lay in words, as I was to discover later.
