Gaia Hypothesis
The man who developed the Gaia Hypothesis was James Lovelock. He was a scientist who was working on a project for NASA. He was to develop experiments for detecting life on Mars.
Definition of Gaia
The derivation of Gaia is from two stems in Greek -- ge for earth (as in geology) and aia: grandmother (who knew). Grandmother Earth.
She was revered as the beginning of life, the primal Goddess. Gaia personified the creator of Earth out of Chaos.
I was pleased, and duly humbled, to learn the Roman name for her was Terra.
The man who developed the Gaia Hypothesis didn't fall into that category. James Lovelock was a scientist who was working on a project for NASA. His ideas began to take shape as far back as the 1960's. His assignment for NASA was to develop experiments for detecting life on Mars.
He pissed off his employer pretty seriously because they were really looking for a reason to land a rover. But Lovelock was certain there was no life on Mars because it was in a state of 'dead equilibrium.' His interests began to wander to the opposite of that.
He became intrigued by the fact that unlike other planets in our solar system, the atmosphere of our "tiny blue marble" was in a state 'far from equilibrium.' It was a unique condition that remained constant and supported life. From this he posited that a complex process was keeping our planet in this unlikely state of life-supporting imbalance.
The science behind it is complex and actually pretty fascinating, but no worries. I couldn't explain it if I wanted to. For our purposes it is enough to know that it has been looked at, experimented with, tested and worked on for decades. While it has its share of critics and naysayers, it turns out that Lovelock's improbable hypothesis has been supported by a number of scientific experiments and has provided a number of useful predictions.
Because of this, the Hypothesis graduated to a Theory, and is now properly referred to as the Gaia Theory.