August Kekule
Friedrich August Kekulé , was a German organic chemist . From the 1850s until his death , Kekulé was one of the most prominent chemists in Europe , especially in theoretical chemistry . He was the principal founder of the theory of chemical structure . The son of a civil servant , Kekulé was born in Darmstadt , the capital of the Grand Duchy of Hesse . After graduating from secondary school ( the Grand Ducal Gymnasium in Darmstadt ), in the fall of 1847 he entered the University of Giessen , with the intention of studying architecture . After hearing the lectures of Justus von Liebig in his first semester , he decided to study chemistry . Kekulé ' s most famous work was on the structure of benzene . In 1865 Kekulé published a paper in French suggesting that the structure contained a six-membered ring of carbon atoms with alternating single and double bonds . The next year he published a much longer paper in German on the same subject . Kekule ’ s Dream In 1890 , at the 25th anniversary of the benzene structure discovery , Friedrich August Kekulé , reminisced about his major accomplishments and told of two dreams that he had at key moments of his work . In his first dream , he saw atoms dance around and link to one another . He awakened and immediately began to sketch what he saw in his dream . The other dream , in which he saw atoms dance around , to form themselves into strings , moving about in a snake-like fashion . This vision continued until the snake of atoms formed itself into an image of a snake eating its own tail . This dream gave Kekulé the idea of the cyclic structure of benzene
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