the.com/extremophile

means An organism that not only survives but thrives in extreme conditions — crushing pressure, boiling heat, acid, radiation, or arctic cold — that would kill most other life.

from Built from Latin extremus, 'outermost' or 'extreme,' and Greek philos, 'loving' or 'fond of' — the same -phile that shows up in bibliophile and Anglophile. Scientists coined it in the 20th century as they kept finding microbes thriving in places assumed to be lifeless: deep-sea hydrothermal vents, Antarctic ice, boiling acidic springs. The word simply names the trait directly — a lover of extremes — once biologists realized they needed a category for life that treats hostility as home.