I believe Karl Popper is the father of the idea of “falsifiability” … I’m not really sure why this idea is put forth as being central to science, when the scientific method was developed well before he was born. Newton actually set out his rules of scientific investigation, and they worked very well.

Aristotle is the father of science, having set out the whole idea of studying the evidence, and hypothesizing and re-hypothesizing continually, all the while banging contradictions out of the hypothesis by consulting the evidence.

During the Renaissance then came important additions of precise measurement and the experimental method. Galileo and Newton used the experimental method and measurement to great effect.