After more than two decades of somewhat precarious efforts, by the 1990s Lovelock’s mostly self-funded investments in Gaia theory begin to pay substantial dividends. A case in point is the £75,000 gift he received in 1992 from Knut Kloster, a Norwegian shipping magnate who studied marine engineering at MIT and then made a massive fortune reinventing the modern cruise industry. Lovelock gives the conclusion of that story in the front matter of Homage to Gaia: He was what my mental model of a Viking told me he should be … I said, “We have a charity, Gaia.” Knut broke in at once and said, “To me, charity is a dirty word. What can I do for you?” I replied, “Give me a contract to work to make Gaia scientifically acceptable. I can’t promise success but I would guess that a three-year contract at £25,000 per year would go far to achieve this objective.” And he did.