1971

Summary

Lovelock’s next letter to Margulis in our record, dated New Year’s Day, 1971, refers again to the draft beginnings of a professional paper: “The paper is by no means finished but I enclose for your interest the section dealing with the state of oxidation, which should indicate the way of thought” (Letter 2). However, his correspondence with Margulis did not mention “Gaia” by name until a year later (Letter 11). He seems to have waited for her to confirm her willingness to join him in co-writing a paper, “if it turns out,” she replied, “we have something to say after our talks” (Letter 8). Fully developed papers “on the Earth’s atmosphere as a biological cybernetic system” become the project of their first collaborative writings.