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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