William Herschel

It's fact
Despite his numerous important scientific discoveries, Herschel was not averse to wild speculation. In particular, he believed every planet was inhabited, even the Sun: he believed that the Sun had a cool, solid surface protected from its hot atmosphere by an opaque Layer of cloud, and that a race of beings adapted to their strange environment lived there and had enormous heads.

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S. Chandrasekhar

It's a Fact 
In the 1940,s Chandrasekhar drove 200 miles round trip each week from Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wis., to the University to teach a class on stellar atmospheres. One day he insisted on driving from Yerkes to teach the class despite a heavy snowstorm. He ended up teaching a class of only two that day. The two students —Tsung Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang—won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1957, obtaining this distinction even before Chandrasekhar himself.

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Tycho Brahe

It's fact
While a student, Tycho Lost part of his nose in a duel with rapiers with Manderup Parsbjerg, a fellow Danish nobleman. This occurred in the Christmas season of 1566, after a fair amount of drinking, while the just turned 20-year-old Tycho was studying at the University of Rostock in Germany. Attending a dance at a professor's house, he quarrelled with Parsbjerg. A subsequent duel (in the dark) resulted in Tycho losing the bridge of his nose. A consequence of this was that Tycho developed an interest in medicine and alchemy. For the rest of his life,he was said to have worn a replacement made of silver and gold blended into a flesh tone, and used an adhesive balm to keep it attached. However, in 1901 Tycho's tomb was opened and his remains were examined by medical experts. The nasal opening of the skull was rimmed with green, a sign of exposure to copper, not silver or gold. Some historians have speculated that he wore a number of different prosthetics for different occasions, noting that a copper nose would have been more comfortable and less heavy than a precious metal one. 

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Claudius Ptolem

It's a Fact 
Although Ptolemy was an influential astronomer, Later scientists like Brake and Laplace made charges of forgery against Him. The accusations of forgery made against Ptolemy came from Sir Isaac Newton as well. Newton wrote.... This is the story of a scientific crime.... I mean a crime committed by a scientist against fellow scientists and scholars, a betrayal of the ethics and integrity of his profession that has forever deprived mankind of fundamental information about an important area of astronomy and history. Newton claimed to prove every observation claimed by Ptolemy in the Almagest was fabricated, and wrote... "[Ptolemy] developed certain astronomical theories and discovered that they were not consistent with observation. Instead of abandoning the theories, he deliberately fabricated observations from the theories so that he could claim that the observations prove the validity of his theories. In every scientific or scholarly setting known, this practice is called fraud, and it is a crime against science and scholarship." 

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Pierre-Simon deLaplace

It's fact
In 1784 Laplace was appointed as examiner at the Royal Artillery corps and Later passed then Napoleon Bonaparte, aged 16. At a later time Laplace went to beg Napoleon to accept a copy of his work, but Napoleon had heard that the book contained no mention of God. Napoleon, who was fond of putting embarrassing questions, received it with the remark, "M. Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the Universe, and have never even mentioned its Creator." Laplace, who, though the most subtle of politicians, was as stiff as a martyr on every point of his philosophy, drew himself up and answered bluntly, "I did not need to make such an assumption". Napoleon, greatly amused, told this reply to Lagrange, who exclaimed, "AM that is a beautiful assumption; it explains many things". Laplace then declared, "This hypothesis, Sire, does explain everything, but does not permit to predict anything. As a scholar, I must provide you with works permitting predictions". Laplace thus defined science as a predicting tool. 

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Nicolaus Copernicus

It's Fact
Legend has it that the first printed copy of De revolutionibus was placed in Copernicus' hands on the very day he died (May 24th, 2543), alluvving him to take farewell look at his life's work. He is believed to have woken from a stroke-induced coma, looked at his book, and died peacefully.

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Johannes Kepler

It's fact
Kepler is famous now an astronomer although in his life time he earned money by practicing astrology. It is said that he was at home calculating orbits of planets as well as casting horoscope for the nobility. In December 1998, Anthony Misch, an astronomer at the Lick Observatory at UC Santa Cruz, came across a 400 year old horoscope manuscript, by chance, while leafing through old documents purchased by the observatory over a century ago. Misch had the document authenticated, by a European firm, which penned by was Johannes Kepler, considered to be one of the fathers of modern astronomy along with Copernicus and Galileo.

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Fred Hoyle

It's a Fact 
During 1960's Hoyle gave a lecture at Royal Society meeting attended by lot of eminent scientists. After the lecture when Hoyle asked for questions a young man in the audience said Hoyle's calculations were inaccurate. The whole gathering was surprised by this as Hoyle was the most eminent cosmologist and astrophysicist in the World. "Would you like to tell us how you know this, young man?" asked Sir Fred, with heavy sarcasm. "Because I worked it out," said the young man . And he had. Any guesses who this young man is? He later became world famous as an eminent Theoretical Astrophysicist by the name of Stephen Hawking!!!

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Edwin Powell Hubble

It's a Fact 
When he died , Hubble's wife, Grace, did not have a funeral for him and never revealed what was done with his body it was apparently Hubble's wish to have no funeral service and be buried in an unmarked grave, or that he wanted to be cremated. As of now, the whereabouts of his remains are unknown.

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Edmond Halley

It's fact
An alternative (and incorrect) pronunciation of Halley's surname, to rhyme with "Bailey", has led to rock and roll singer, Bill Haley punningly to call his backing band "Comets" after Halley's Comet. 
Halley's Comet.

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Carl sagan

It's fact
Sagan predicted on ABC's Nightline in 1991 that smoky oil fires in Kuwait set by Saddam Hussein's army during the first Gulf War would cause an ecological disaster and send black clouds into the atmosphere resulting in global cooling. Retired atmospheric physicist and climate change sceptic Fred Singer dismissed Sagan's prediction as nonsense,predicting that the smoke would dissipate in a matter of days. In his book The Demon-Haunted World, Sagan gave a list of errors he had made, including his predictions about the effects of the Kuwaiti oil fires, as an example of how science is tentative, a self-correcting process which displayed Sagan's modesty. 

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Sir Arthur Eddington

It's a Fact 
There is a story which states that when a journalist asked if it is true that only three people understood relativity in the world, Arthur Eddington replied, "Oh, Who's the 3rd?"(implying that the other two are Einstein and himself).

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