The self-appointed high priests and keepers of the pure faith of science laughed him to scorn, ridiculed him, and essentially excommunicated him for thinking such an unacceptable thing.
And so it continues today.
You may be thinking of (the late) Thomas Gold, one of the bright spots of the 20th century. :')
As someone noted here, it was Thomas Gold. And he was - and is still being - laughed at by the "fossil" fuel advocates. Just like global warming, anyyone who comes up with a theory or information that opposes the "accepted" (viz., grant producing) dogma, they are personally ridiculed and attacked. Not the theory or data, but the person personally. Yup, really open minds there... One of the world's leading advocates for the theory that hydrocarbons are renewable is Dr. Thomas Gold who contends that oil is not a limited resource, and that oil, natural gas and coal, are not so-called “fossil fuels.” In his book, The Deep Hot Biosphere: The Myth of Fossil Fuels, he explains that dinosaurs and plants and the fossils from those living beings are not the origin of oil and natural gas, but rather generated from a chemical substance in the crust of the Earth. Dr. Gold: "Astronomers have been able to find that hydrocarbons, as oil, gas and coal are called, occur on many other planetary bodies. They are a common substance in the universe. You find it in the kind of gas clouds that made systems like our solar system. You find large quantities of hydrocarbons in them. Is it reasonable to think that our little Earth, one of the planets, contains oil and gas for reasons that are all its own and that these other bodies have it because it was built into them when they were born? That question makes a lot of sense. After all, they didn’t have dinosaurs and ferns on Jupiter to produce oil and gas?"
Some info about Gold: