Gaia is a tough bitch.
Hot Cold Passion: a passion for science.
She was a Scientist, first.
And she was a Character — a very interesting, and complex character.
Having entered the science community as a woman, when men still dominated science, and being charmed by a huge scientific ego, Carl, she luckily had to explore the backwaters of evolutionary biology at the time, bacteria, not getting much support from him or her male contemporaries. Of course, like all good science, that estuary of knowledge contained biological riches totally ignored by well established conventional scientific community. Like Darwin before, she was sui generis: a driven, feisty, no holds barred, idea brawler — an intellectual maverick — by necessity and choice. Initially ignored, she generated a fair amount of hostility from the conventional scientific community when they were challenged.
And intellectual mavericks, with persistence, are the only type to challenge the major ideas of conventional science, and win — somewhat.