He reported his family could not afford to send him to university and he received support from a 'cadetship' in mineralogy and petrology awarded by the Australian Museum.
He had to oversee the university's response to the Dawkins reforms, which saw amalgamations with colleges and institutes, and student fees re-introduced in Australia.
[6] His final role was chair of the academic committee of the university's Office for Environmental Programs (until 2015), which established a student scholarship in his name.
His PhD was on trace element studies of iron meteorites, identifying gallium and germanium through emission spectrography.
At ANU he used electron microprobes to analyse micron or micrometre sized particles in rocks or meteorites, to determine mineral chemical composition.
Lovering's Australian research group were the first to identify the structure of a mineral never found on Earth, naming it tranquillityite.