I'll give you Pauling, but Newton studying alchemy in the 17th and 18th centuries would have been far from delusional when you consider "Robert Boyle pioneered

I'll give you Pauling, but Newton studying alchemy in the 17th and 18th centuries would have been far from delusional when you consider "Robert Boyle pioneered the scientific method in chemical investigations"[0] around that time. According to the same Wikipedia article, it was only sometime between 1720-1740 when "alchemy" came to mean "attempts to transmute other materials into gold." Newton died in 1726. --- [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy#Later_modern_period https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy#Later_modern_period