Prior to the discovery of germ theory and antiseptic, women frequently died of puerperal fever in the maternity ward at the University of Vienna Hospital.
Enter Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian-born physician working at the Vienna hospital, one of the world’s leading medical establishments.
Carl Hempel’s account of Semmelweis’s false starts, failed hypotheses, and eventual success can be read on pages 7-9 in my Philosophical Foundations of Education booklet [pdf]. And at History of Antiseptics page, Mary Bellis gives account of the initial chilly reception given to Semmelweis’s discoveries.
For his observation skills, his conceptual flexibility, his rigorous analytic method, his willingness to recognize failure and to start again, and for his persistence and independence over a long period of time while women continued to die — Ignaz Semmelweis (1818-1865) is a hero of modern science.