"James Lovelock died yesterday (Tuesday) at home surrounded by his family on his 103rd birthday," the scientist's relatives said in a statement on Wednesday.
"To the world he was known as a trailblazer, a climate prophet and the inventor of the Gaia theory," his family added, hailing "a loving husband, fabulous father with endless curiosity and a mischievous sense of humor. 'humor".
Presenting himself throughout his career as an "independent scientist", Lovelock had created controversy with his apocalyptic vision of the climate crisis.
"It is now late, far too late to save the planet as we know it," he explained to AFP in 2009, a few months before the Copenhagen climate conference (COP15) which will take place. ended in resounding failure.
"Be ready for change, adapt to the change to come. And prepare for enormous human losses", he said, a then minority position in the scientific world.
Lovelock, born in 1919, grew up in south London between the wars and worked for the British Institute of Medical Research for twenty years. In the 1950s, he invented the device used to detect the hole in the ozone layer.
Hired by NASA in the early 1960s, he went to California to work on the possibility of life on Mars.
- "Gaia hypothesis" -
He is known for having formulated the "Gaïa hypothesis" in 1970, presenting the Earth as a living being capable of self-regulation. At the time, his theory was criticized by his peers.
"What a life and what stories! The genius of Jim (his nickname) made him the Forrest Gump of science, shaping the first climate sciences, the search for life on Mars, the discovery of the hole in the layer of ozone, the conception of the world as a self-regulating system", paid tribute in a tweet to his biographer, the journalist of the Guardian Jonathan Watts.
"Working for Shell, NASA, MI6 (British Foreign Intelligence) and Hewlett Packard, he had access and knowledge. When he warned the world about the climate crisis, he spoke with immense authority," said underlined Mr. Watts, emphasizing the tense relationship he had with the environmental movements, however.
He "had worked for oil groups, chemical conglomerates and the army. He was passionately pro-nuclear", added the biographer.
His support for nuclear power and his criticism of renewable energies - he said in 2009 that they had "not the ounce of an impact in the fight against global warming" - had shocked environmentalists.
"Arguably the most important independent scientist of the last century, Lovelock was decades ahead of his time in his thinking about Earth and climate," hailed the Science Museum in London.
In an interview with AFP in June 2020, Lovelock had relativized the coronavirus pandemic which "kills in particular those of my age - the old ones - and there are already too many of them".
"Climate change is more dangerous to life on Earth than almost any other conceivable disease," he said.
His condition had deteriorated after a recent fall, his family said.
