James Ephraim Lovelock CH CBE FRS (26 July 1919 – 26 July 2022) was an English independent scientist. He became an environmentalist and futurist. He was best known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis. This suggests the biosphere is a self-regulating system.

After the development of an instrument in the late 1960s, Lovelock was the first to detect the widespread presence of CFCs in the atmosphere. He found a concentration of 60 parts per trillion of CFC-11 over Ireland. He went on to measure the concentration of CFC-11 from the northern hemisphere to the Antarctic aboard the research ship RRS Shackleton.