Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1991, and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is a scientist. He was brought up in comparatively poor

circumstances in Brixton in South London where his father was a gas man. He hated

school, but he knew he wanted to be a scientist and eventually got a degree.

He worked first with the Medical Research Council and later on the American Space Program.

It was a distinguished career, but in the mid-60s he broke free in order to develop his own ideas.

Chief among these is the Gaya theory.

This states that the world resembles a living organism which knows how to regulate itself.

The human race is simply a part of that organism but not necessarily vital to it.

If man misbehaves, he may ultimately be rejected and will perish.

Some say this theory is metaphysical nonsense.

Others call it a brilliant analytical vision of our future.

Either way, it's turned its author into a celebrity.

He is James Lovelock. It's a very romantic name, Geier, to give to a scientific theory,

the mythological goddess of the earth.

Why did you choose it?

Well I didn't choose it.

It was William Golding, the novelist who chose it.

He was a near neighbor of mine and a friend when I lived in Wiltshire, a village called

Bowerchalk. And I just had the idea. It was in the early 70s. And I was discussing it with him, trying

to tell him about it and he seemed impressed and said to me

...