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Semmelweiss. His radical idea of "surgeons ought to wash their hands" saw him widely ridiculed and reduced to poverty, and he died in an institution.
Semmelweis discovered that a particular type of infection was much less likely to occur when doctors washed their hands with chlorinated lime water between doing an autopsy and examining a patient. However he did not know why or how this worked, and did not discover microorganisms (which were already observed by Antoni Van Leeuwenhoek some ~180 years earlier).
Wasn’t he also kinda of a dick to people
If I knew something that everyone could do to dramatically reduce the risk of life threatening infections, and nobody listened to me, I’d be kind of a dick too.
I think it was the other way around nobody listened to him because he was a dick
Semmelweis didn't discover microbes. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek first observed microbes in feces using the first microscope (the Leeuvenhoek microscope), which he also invented.