[joquarky]

The fact that you couldn't pick a different person as an example makes for a very weak assertion.

[jibal]

There's no evidence that they couldn't pick a different person. There are quite a few other persons and some other commenters pointed out some of them.

[dboreham]

Newton.

[BurningFrog]

Newton pretty much invented several fields of science, like Classical Mechanics, Optics, Calculus, and Gravitational Astronomy.

He started out as a novice in all of them.

That Alchemy failed to pan out as a science doesn't make him a crank in my book. You can't know Alchemy is impossible until you try pretty hard.