Under Construction

Examples of Scientists - August Kekulé

Let us learn to dream, gentlemen, then perhaps we shall find the truth ... but let us beware of publishing our dreams before they have been put to the proof by the waking understanding - August Kekulé - address to the German Chemical Society, 1890

Index

August Kekulé's background

What makes August Kekulé such a great example?

August Kekulé's background

August Kekulé was a German organic chemist, one of the most prominent chemists in Europe from the 1850s until his death, and the principal founder of the theory of chemical structure. He is best remembered for his 1865 proposal that the benzene molecule is a ring of six carbon atoms, an insight he later said came to him in a daydream of a snake seizing its own tail, the ancient symbol of the ouroboros.

What makes August Kekulé such a great example?

Birth of August Kekulé

August Kekulé is a classic example of insight arriving through reverie rather than deliberate reasoning: by his own account the ring structure of benzene, which had eluded him through ordinary calculation, came to him fully formed in a moment of drowsy daydreaming. It makes a good test of whether a chart can show intuition breaking through where conscious method had stalled.

The chart shown is August Kekulé's birthchart, together with transits for his 1865 proposal of the benzene ring structure, guessed at midday, around the outside. Aspect lines [traditional] are between the transits and his birthchart.