My friend and colleague Stephan Harding, who has died aged 71, was a scientist, ecologist and teacher. At the heart of his work lay his deep feeling for the Earth and his belief in the planet as a living intelligence.
As teacher and resident ecologist, he was one of the five founding faculty 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 to be invited to teach at Schumacher was James Lovelock, the originator 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 for 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 working on Daisyworld, a simulation that models the plausibility of Gaia theory.
However, Stephan also took Gaia beyond Lovelock’s original description of a self-regulating planet, telling the story in his book Animate Earth (2006) of Gaia as a living intelligence, thus reclaiming the ancient idea of Anima Mundi, of Earth infused with soul. Nevertheless throughout he held firmly to his identity as a natural scientist, aiming to broaden rather than contradict science.
His parents, Severin Zilberman and Estera (nee Weindling), were of Polish-Jewish descent, meeting in Palestine after fleeing Poland and Nazi persecution. They moved to Caracas, Venezuela, where Severin established a successful business, and where Stephan was born.
Estera died when he was three, and the family moved to West Hampstead, north-west London, when Stephan was six. Severin later changed the family name to the English-sounding Harding.
Stephan Harding with James Lovelock, left, who was one of the first speakers invited to Schumacher College after its inception in 1991
Stephan went to William Ellis grammar school in Gospel Oak, going on to study zoology at Durham University. Graduating in 1975, he did fieldwork in 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 in Costa Rica in 1984, helping to establish a master’s programme in wildlife management that has been influential in saving the red macaw, among other species.
Stephan was an extraordinary teacher. He talked serious science in warm and playful ways, translating complex ideas into vivid images. Experiential activities such as the Deep Time Walk – a 4.6km trail originally along the Devon coast that takes the participant through the 4.6m-year history of the planet – gave students a visceral understanding of their place on Earth. It is also available as an app and set of teaching materials through the Deep Time website.
With the biologist Brian Goodwin, Stephan also established the MSc in holistic science in 1998, accredited by Plymouth University. It was the first of its kind, and unique, presenting a radical new way of practising science that recognises the scientist’s embodied participation in the natural world. However, Schumacher College’s degree courses came to a close 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 at Schumacher in 1991; they married in 2001 and had a son, Oscar.
Stephan suffered for several years from Crohn’s disease and latterly from aggressive lymphoma.
Julia and his children survive him.