Editing August Kekulé (section)

=== Kekulé's dream ===
[[File:Ouroboros-benzene.svg|thumb|200px|Kekulé's benzene ring in modern form, and the alchemical ouroboros symbol of a snake eating its tail]]
The new understanding of benzene, and hence of all aromatic compounds, proved to be so important for both pure and applied chemistry after 1865 that in 1890 the German Chemical Society organized an elaborate appreciation in Kekulé's honor, celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of his first benzene paper. Here Kekulé spoke of the creation of the theory. He said that he had discovered the ring shape of the benzene molecule after having a reverie or day-dream of a snake seizing its own tail (this is an ancient symbol known as the [[ouroboros]]).<ref>{{cite book | isbn = 978-0-486-28690-7 | title = From Alchemy to Chemistry | last1 = Read | first1 = John | year = 1957 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=F6J-AUOWzpMC | pages = 179–180| publisher = Courier Corporation }}</ref>

Another depiction of benzene had appeared in 1886 in the ''Berichte der Durstigen Chemischen Gesellschaft'' (Journal of the Thirsty Chemical Society), a parody of the ''Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft'', only the parody had six monkeys seizing each other in a circle, rather than a single snake as in Kekulé's anecdote.<ref>Translated into English by D. Wilcox and F. Greenbaum, ''Journal of Chemical Education'', 42 (1965), 266–67.</ref> Some historians have suggested that the parody was a lampoon of the snake anecdote, possibly already well-known through oral transmission even if it had not yet appeared in print.<ref>{{cite journal|title=Hypothesis and Experiment in Kekulé's Benzene Theory|author=A.J. Rocke|journal=Annals of Science|year=1985|volume=42|issue=4|pages=355–81|doi=10.1080/00033798500200411}}</ref> Others have speculated that Kekulé's story in 1890 was a re-parody of the monkey spoof, and was a mere invention rather than a recollection of an event in his life.

Kekulé's 1890 speech,<ref>{{cite journal|title=Benzolfest: Rede|author=Aug. Kekulé|journal=[[Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft]]|year=1890|volume=23|issue=1|pages=1302–11|doi=10.1002/cber.189002301204|url=https://zenodo.org/record/1425576}}</ref> in which these anecdotes appeared, has been translated into English.<ref>{{cite journal |author=O. T. Benfey|title=August Kekulé and the Birth of the Structural Theory of Organic Chemistry in 1858|journal=Journal of Chemical Education|volume=35|issue=1|year=1958|pages=21–23|doi=10.1021/ed035p21|bibcode=1958JChEd..35...21B}}</ref> If one takes the anecdote as reflecting an accurate memory of a real event, circumstances mentioned in the story suggest that it must have happened early in 1862.<ref>{{cite journal|author=Jean Gillis|title=Auguste Kekulé et son oeuvre, realisee a Gand de 1858 a 1867|journal=Mémoires de l'Académie Royale de Belgique|volume=37|issue=1|year=1966|pages=1–40}}</ref>

He told another autobiographical anecdote in the same 1890 speech, of an earlier vision of dancing atoms and molecules that led to his theory of structure, published in May 1858. This happened, he claimed, while he was riding on the upper deck of a [[horse-drawn omnibus]] in London. Once again, if one takes the anecdote as reflecting an accurate memory of a real event, circumstances related in the anecdote suggest that it must have occurred in the late summer of 1855.<ref>{{cite book |author=Alan J. Rocke|title=Image and Reality: Kekulé, Kopp, and the Scientific Imagination|publisher=University of Chicago Press|year=2010|pages=60–66|isbn=978-0-226-72332-7}}</ref>