The circumstances of Kekulé's "molecular dream" in London in 1854

Dayan, Anthony D.

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/127649 Copy

Description

Title

The circumstances of Kekulé's "molecular dream" in London in 1854

Author(s)

Dayan, Anthony D.

Issue Date

2006-03-15

Keyword(s)

• History
• Chemistry
• History chemist ring structure benzene

Abstract

Among the more famous "dreams" or reveries in the history of science are two instances attributed to August Kekule in the second half of the 19th century. Kekule describes how in 1854 he was living in south, London in the Clapham Road near Clapham Common. On a fine summer evening, he visited his close friend, Hugo Muller, and then caught the last omnibus home. He sat outside, on the top of the omnibus and fell into a "dream" or "reverie" in which he "saw" in his mid atoms in a whirling dance that formed strings that grew by adding smaller strings at their ends. Kekule developed ideas that single carbon atoms could combine with each other to form chains and subsequently that chains of carbon atoms could become rings by combination of their ends, resulting in attribution of the special 6-membered ring structure to the benzene mol.

Publisher

Division of the History of Chemistry

ISSN

1053-4385

Type of Resource

text

Genre of Resource

article

Language

eng

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/127649

DOI

https://doi.org/10.70359/bhc2006v031p028

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2006 Division of the History of Chemistry

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