Friedrich August KEKUL

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Friedrich August KEKULÉ
(later Kekulé von Stradonitz)

• Born Germany, 7th September 1829

Darmstadt,
Died Bonn, 13th July 1896
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Resume of Kekulé

• went to school in Darmstadt

• studied Architecture first

• but became interested in
• Chemistry later

• discoverer of the carbon
• ring structure (1857)

Kekulé as young man
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Resume of Kekulé

• First married in 1862

• Professor in Ghent and
• Bonn (1858-1865)

• He died on the 13th July
• of 1896

• From the first 5 Nobel
• Prizes his students won 3

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His majorwork

• When Kekulé started to search for Molecule
  structures, most of the other Chemists thought
  that these structures are unknowable. But Kekulé,
  still searching for the structures, had a dream
  one day. He himself described the events as
  followed

I turned my chair to the fire after having
worked on the problem for some time and dozed.
Again the atoms were gambolling before my eyes.
This time the smaller groups kept modestly to the
background. My mental eye, rendered more acute by
repeated vision of this kind, could not
distinguish larger structures, of manifold
conformation long rows, sometimes more closely
fitted together all twining and twisting in
snakelike motion. But look! What was that? One of
the snakes had seized hold of its own tail, and
the form whirled mockingly before my eyes. As if
by a flash of lightning I awoke... Let us learn
to dream, gentlemen.
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Modern Aspects of Kekulés discoveries
Today, most scientists think that the dream of
Kekulé is only an imagination and did never take
place. But even though it is a nice story, and it
also makes sense and more easier to understand
his results.
His vision of the benzene ring became the basis
for the chemistry of aromatic compounds.
A picture of Kekulés dream
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Presented by Clemens Groche for Comenius Project
2005/2006