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August KekuléReverie dated to the 1860s; told in 1890

Kekulé's snake biting its tail

A famous story about a dream that led to the ring structure of benzene. Historians disagree about how much of it to believe.

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Der Traum

Nach den unten genannten Quellen in eigenen Worten nacherzählt, nicht zitiert.

At a celebration in his honour in 1890, the chemist August Kekulé told his audience how some of his ideas had come to him. He described dozing in front of the fire while working on a textbook. Atoms danced before his eyes, long rows of them twisting like snakes, until one of the snakes seized its own tail.

He said he woke as if struck by lightning and spent the rest of the night working out the consequences. The ring of six carbon atoms he proposed for benzene in 1865 became one of the foundations of organic chemistry.

Woher die Geschichte stammt

Kekulé told the story about twenty-five years after the discovery, in an after-dinner speech. He also described an earlier daydream on a London bus, in which atoms linked into chains. In his own words the experience was a half-sleep or reverie rather than a dream in the full sense.

Wie der Traum gedeutet wurde

Geschichte

The snake image has become the standard example of a dream solving a scientific problem. Taken carefully, it shows something more ordinary: an expert who has been thinking about a problem for years, half-dozing, seeing the pieces rearrange.

Fragen zu deinen eigenen Träumen

  1. Is there a problem you have been turning over for a long time?
  2. Have you noticed ideas arriving when you stop trying, just before sleep or on waking?
  3. How do you tell the story of a good idea afterwards, and what do you leave out?

Symbole in diesem Traum

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Quellen

Jede Deutung auf dieser Seite stammt aus diesen Werken. Noch sind nicht alle Seitenangaben geprüft. Ausstehende Prüfungen sind gekennzeichnet.

  1. August Kekulé (1890). Speech at the Benzolfest, Berlin, 11 March 1890. Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft 23.

    gemeinfreiumstrittene Theorie

    • Fundstelle: Benzolfest speech, Berlin, 11 March 1890 (Fundstelle noch nicht geprüft)
    • Fundstelle: Benzolfest speech (Fundstelle noch nicht geprüft)

    Kekulé's own after-dinner account, given about 25 years after his benzene paper. Historians debate how literally to take it.

  2. Alan J. Rocke (2010). Image and Reality: Kekulé, Kopp, and the Scientific Imagination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    als Quelle angeführt, nicht vervielfältigt

    • Fundstelle: chapters on Kekulé's reveries (Fundstelle noch nicht geprüft)

    Historian of chemistry; discusses the reliability of Kekulé's reverie stories.