Helen Mary Hyslop: Who was James Lovelock’s wife?
British independent scientist, environmentalist, and futurist James Lovelock. The Gaia hypothesis, which holds that the Earth operates as a self-regulating mechanism, is what made him most famous. Tom Arthur Lovelock (1873-1957) and his second wife Nellie Annie Elizabeth (née March 1887-1980) Lovelock had James Lovelock in Letchworth Garden City. Nell, his mother, started working at…
British independent scientist, environmentalist, and futurist James Lovelock. The Gaia hypothesis, which holds that the Earth operates as a self-regulating mechanism, is what made him most famous.
Tom Arthur Lovelock (1873-1957) and his second wife Nellie Annie Elizabeth (née March 1887-1980) Lovelock had James Lovelock in Letchworth Garden City. Nell, his mother, started working at a pickle factory at the age of 13 after winning a scholarship to a grammar school but being unable to accept it. Nell was born in Bermondsey.
Lovelock characterized her as a socialist and suffragist who was anti-vaccination and refused to give Lovelock his smallpox immunization as a child.
His father, Tom, was born in Fawley, Berkshire, and had done six months of hard labour in his teens for poaching. He was illiterate until attending technical college and then running a bookshop.
Helen Mary Hyslop: Who was James Lovelock’s wife?
James Lovelock’s ex-wife is Helen Mary. They married in 1942 and divorced in 1989, after Helen died.
Helen Mary, also known as Nelly or Ellen Hyslop, was a ‘notable local beauty’ in Moffat, and a strong local myth holds that Robert Burns was a great admirer of her for a period and that she had an affair with him.
This relationship is reported to have resulted in the birth of a daughter named Helen. According to parish records, John Hyslop and Janet Howatson of Langholm were the parents of Burns’ conceivable daughter’s mother Helen Hyslop, who was born there in 1766.
Other than her attractiveness, little is known about Ellen/Helen or Nelly. After retiring, the daughter, also named Ellen/Helen, continued to reside on the same small backstreet in Moffat where she was born until she was 98 years old.
According to an 1887 Pall Mall Gazette account, the daughter bore a great physical similarity to Robert Burns’ pictures when she was young and even remained a significant resemblance to her death, having comparable curves of her face and the poet’s dark, sparkling eyes.
This daughter enlisted about the age of seven and married a Mr. Armstrong, who died many years before her.
