You are listening to Business Daily. I'm Justin Roller, and we have a real treat for you today,

an interview with one of Britain's most eminent scientists. James Lovelock has just turned 101,

and as you will discover, is one of the most cheerful men you could possibly meet.

Mr. Lovelock has a very long list of achievements in what has been an extremely long career.

His work helped create the modern environmental movement and drive home why we should be so

worried about climate change. But his first job in science was back in 1936 when at the age of 17 he got a job as

an apprentice working in the then cutting edge field of colour photography, the equivalent perhaps

of working in advanced special effects today. In the 1960s, he helped develop the early space probes for NASA, sharing an office with the legendary

astronomer Carl Sagan. But his most famous insight has been the so-called Gaia hypothesis. It is the

idea that thanks to life, the Earth is a self-regulating system. I met James Lovelock days after his 101st birthday at his remote

seaside cottage on the south coast of England. My mother and father couldn't afford to send me

to university. In fact, they needed an income I could produce at age 17 when I left to grammar school.

And so I went to work for a firm of consultants.

I was dead lucky.

I learnt more from them and a better attitude than any student anywhere would get.

I learnt so much because the boss, he said,

don't worry about learning the science,

we're going to pay for you to go to Birkbeck as an evening class student,

which they did.

And it said, as soon as you passed your degree, said you get the sack,

said, we can't afford to employ graduates.

It's boys like you that keep this firm going.

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