Nicolaus Copernicus

He computed and checked for thirty years and brought himself to print only as he lay dying. There is no direct Jewish connection, but there is a long consequence: the argument over how to regard the new astronomy ran in Hebrew books for two centuries. David Gans, a student of the Maharal, worked with Tycho Brahe and Kepler and in Nechmad ve-Na'im set out both systems without deciding between them; Tuvia Cohen in Ma'aseh Tuvia (1707) rejected Copernicus; and only in the eighteenth century does the new astronomy enter Hebrew books as accepted.