Galileo, who was trumped by Newton, until Einstein ruled the roost.
...
Those are more like improvements rather than proving the previous person wrong. Or one could look at it as the recent champion standing on the shoulders of giants.
Right you are. And that was my only disagreement with the author's thesis. Newton refined Galileo's work. And Einstein refined Newton's.
In fact, it could be argued that Newton wasn't all that "wrong" anyway. His work was a very good approximation under most conditions.