My friend and colleague Stephan Harding, who has died aged 71, was a scientist, ecologist and teacher. At the heart of his work was his deep feeling for the Earth and his belief in the planet as a living intelligence.
As a teacher and resident ecologist, he was one of the five founding faculties at Schumacher College, a progressive institution for ecological studies created in 1991 as part of Dartington Hall Trust in Totnes, Devon.
One of the first people invited to teach at Schumacher was James Lovelockthe creator of Gaia theory, that is, the idea that the Earth, or Gaia, is a vast self-regulating organism, in which all living things collectively define and maintain the conditions conducive to life on Earth.
Meeting Lovelock was the moment when Stephan’s life’s work began in earnest. They collaborated on the scientific understanding of the Earth as Gaia, including work on Daisyworld, a simulation that models the plausibility of Gaia theory.
However, Stephan has also taken Gaia beyond Lovelock’s original description of a self-regulating planet and told the story in his book Animate Earth (2006) of Gaia as a living intelligence, thus disproving the ancient idea of Anima Mundi, of the Earth infused with soul. Nevertheless, he consistently held fast to his identity as a natural scientist, with the aim of broadening science rather than contradicting it.
His parents, Severin Zilberman and Estera (née Weindling), were of Polish-Jewish descent, and met in Palestine after fleeing Poland and Nazi persecution. They moved to Caracas, Venezuelawhere Severin founded a successful business, and where Stephan was born.
Estera died when he was three, and the family moved to West Hampstead, northwest London, when Stephan was six. Severin later changed the family name to the English-sounding Harding.
Stephan went to William Ellis Grammar School in Gospel Oak and went on to study zoology at Durham University. He graduated in 1975 and did field work studying mammals in the Llanos area of Venezuela, funded by the Smithsonian Institution.
After a PhD at St Peter’s College, Oxford, he was appointed visiting professor at the National University of Costa Rica in 1984, helping to establish a master’s program in wildlife management that was influential in saving the scarlet macaw, among other species.
Stephan was an extraordinary teacher. He spoke serious science in warm and playful ways, translating complex ideas into vivid images. Experiential activities such as the Deep Time Walk – a 4.6km route originally along the Devon coast that takes the participant through 4.6m of the planet’s history – gave students a visceral understanding of their place on Earth . It is also available as an application and sets teaching materials through the Deep Time website.
With the biologist Brian GoodwinStephan also established the MSc in holistic science in 1998, accredited by Plymouth University. It was the first of its kind, and unique, to practice a radical new way of doing science that recognized the scientist’s embodied participation in the natural world. However, Schumacher College’s degree courses came to an end in August when the Dartington Hall Trust said that it could not provide further funding.
Stephan had a daughter, Victoria, from a relationship with Eva Bastiansen. He met Julia Ponsonby Schumacher in 1991; they married in 2001 and had a son, Oscar.
Stephan suffered from Crohn’s disease for several years and later from aggressive lymphoma.
Julia and his children survive him.
