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# Kekulé, the dream of the ouroboros and the dispute over who conceived the benzene ring
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/schitaetsia-chto-nemetskii-khimik-avgust-kekule-sdelal-krupneishee-v-svoei-zhizni-otkrytie-vo-sne/
- Published: 2025-06-10T05:33:40.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-02T18:37:48.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Science, People

German chemist August Kekulé is said to have made the greatest discovery of his life in a dream.

Kekulé had long supposed that the valency of carbon was four, but could not understand how, this being so, a benzene molecule could consist of 6 atoms of tetravalent carbon and 6 atoms of monovalent hydrogen. The structure of the molecule would not come together. And then, having dozed off by the fireplace, he saw the ouroboros, the serpent devouring its own tail, and on waking he finally understood that the benzene molecule could not have a linear structure at all, but had the form of a ring, or hexagon, in which each carbon atom is bonded to one hydrogen atom and two carbon atoms.

True, his opponents accused Kekulé of inventing the story of the dream to justify plagiarism: a number of scholars consider that the idea of the benzene ring, which, it seems, is covered in the tenth form, originally belonged to the Frenchman Auguste Laurent.

![](https://theparnassian.com/content/images/2026/09/photo_16847@10-06-2025_08-33-40.jpg)