James Ephraim Lovelock CH CBE FRS (26 July 1919 – 26 July 2022) was an English independent scientist, environmentalist and futurist. He is best known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis, which postulates that the Earth functions as a self-regulating system. For decades he also worked for MI5, the British security service. Bryan Appleyard, writing in The Sunday Times, described him as "basically Q in the James Bond films".