There is a legend that Dmitri Mendeleev worked for three days without sleep, and when he closed his eyes, he saw in a dream the periodic table of chemical elements. He woke up stunned and transferred everything from memory to paper. True, Mendeleev himself treated this fascinating legend with irony. “I’ve been thinking about it for maybe twenty years, and you decided: you sat and suddenly ... it’s ready,” he said. But still, history knows cases when brilliant ideas really came to their creators in a dream.
1. Theory of relativity
Albert Einstein's bright head came up with brilliant ideas even when he was sleeping. One such idea was the theory of relativity. He saw in a dream a herd of cows that were standing near an electric fence. The farmer turned on the current, and at that moment the cows simultaneously bounced off the fence. But the farmer, who watched this picture from the other side of the field, saw the other one in a slightly different way - the animals bounced off one after another, like a “wave” of fans on the podium. In the morning, Einstein began to think about his dream and realized that the same event looks different depending on the angle of view - on the deformation of time and space.
2. Terminator
In 1981, almost no one in Hollywood knew about James Cameron, and three decades later he became the director of two of the highest grossing films in the history of cinema. At the beginning of his creative career, he simply did not know what to write to him. Decided everything by chance. While in Rome, Cameron fell ill, and half-delirious saw a strange picture - a robot is born from an explosion. He is cut in half, armed with knives and trying to catch up with the woman. And although Cameron felt disgusting, he was able to write down his dream, and when he returned to the States, he created the character that brought him fame - the Terminator.
3. "Yesterday"
Paul McCartney wrote one of the Beatles' most popular songs in his sleep. Here is how the musician himself spoke about this in an interview: “I am sure that real insight comes when you do not look for it. "Yesterday", which has become one of the most popular songs in the world, I heard in a dream. I tormented myself for a long time in tedious attempts to write something like this, some kind of sad song that would be different from everything written before. The idea was spinning in my head, and in a dream, the subconscious probably worked. I woke up to this tune!
4. Sewing machine
The sewing machine was invented in 1845 after Elias Howe saw a phantasmagoria dream. As if he was taken prisoner by men with spears and wanted to kill him. On the points of their spears, he noticed holes. This idea became the missing link in the creation of the sewing machine.
5. Nervous system
Back in the early 20th century, scientists thought that information was transmitted between neurons through electrical impulses. But somehow Dr. Otto Levi had an unusual dream, which he wrote down on paper while half asleep. In the morning, after rereading his notes, Levi realized that the work of the nervous system is based on chemical reactions. Subsequently, this discovery brought him the Nobel Prize.
6. Planetary model of the atom
In 1913, the Danish scientist Niels Bohr had a dream that he found himself in the sun. The planets revolved around at great speed. Waking up, he created a planetary model of the structure of atoms, for which he later received the Nobel Prize.
7. The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali
"The Persistence of Memory" - one of the most famous paintings by the artist Salvador Dali - according to the artist, "came" to him in a dream. “This is the embodiment on the canvas of my dream,” Dali said more than once.
8. DNA
In the middle of the 20th century, the American scientist James Watson saw two intertwining snakes in a dream. This prompted him to the idea of the shape and structure of DNA.
9. Balm for hair growth
Madame CJ Walker is known as the world's first female millionaire. She made her fortune in the early 20th century in cosmetics. CJ Walker said that in a dream a stranger came to her, who gave her a recipe for a remedy for rapid hair growth. It was this tool that helped her earn.
10. Benzene
The chemist Friedrich Kekule had a dream about the formula for benzene. He recalled: “I dreamed of two snakes. As if spellbound, I followed their dance, when suddenly one of the "snakes" grabbed its tail and danced teasingly before my eyes. As if pierced by lightning, I woke up: the structure of benzene is a closed ring!
It happens that not only scientists act as inventors. So, in the world there is at least.
Many people think that sleep takes time away from useful activities. The more we sleep, the less we will do. But is it? History shows that sometimes minutes of sleep are more valuable than years of wakefulness. Many famous people saw ideas in a dream that did not come to their mind during long reflections in reality. This post contains a selection of cases where certain discoveries and inventions were made in a dream.
The great Russian chemist Mendeleev, according to him, had a dream about the periodic table of chemical elements. Thinking for a long time about how to arrange the elements, Mendeleev spent a long time without sleep, and when he finally fell asleep, he saw the same table in a dream. Waking up, Mendeleev immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper. Everything fell into place. According to him, subsequently, only one small edit had to be made to the table seen in a dream.
Another chemist, Kekule, discovered the formula for benzene using sleep. Although the composition of benzene was known, chemists could not figure out how the atoms in the benzene molecule were connected to each other. Pondering over the problem, Kekule fell asleep and in a dream saw how chains of atoms swirled in front of him, and one of them closed into a ring. Kekule woke up and immediately wrote down the hypothesis of the cyclic structure of the benzene molecule, which was later confirmed.
The sewing machine seems like a familiar invention, but it was not so easy to invent it. When the American mechanic Elias Howe was developing his first sewing machine in 1844, the eye of the needle for the thread was very inconvenient for him. It did not allow the mechanism to easily pull the needle through the fabric. Other inventors also faced this problem, sometimes finding strange solutions. So, John Greenough in 1842 patented a needle, pointed at both ends and with an eye for thread in the middle of the needle. Special tweezers grabbed the needle from one side of the fabric, then from the other, and dragged it through the fabric, imitating the movements of the seamstress's hands. But the machine was much slower than the human. Howe had a nightmare: he was captured by cannibals, threatening to kill him if he did not immediately create a sewing machine! He noticed that the savages brandished spears with holes in the tips. Waking up, the mechanic sketched out a sketch of the system. Since then, all machines use such needles.
In 1782, the English locksmith William Watts proposed a new method for making shots, which he saw in a dream. Prior to this, shot was usually made from lead wire, cut into pieces and rolled out. Once Watts had a dream in which he saw rain, and the drops flying from a great height were completely round. Watts realized that it was possible to get perfectly round shot by pouring molten lead from a great height. Soon the shot began to be made in special shot towers.
A very useful invention that allowed people to stop getting dirty with ink was made in 1938 by Laszlo Biro. Before that, when writing, people used a fountain pen, which had to be constantly dipped in ink. Attempts to somehow improve it ended in failure. And then one day the Hungarian journalist Laszlo Biro had a dream. He dreamed that some people were looking through his window from the street and interfering with his work. In the dream, the journalist grabbed a gun and fired at the hooligans. But the gun turned out to be loaded with ink, and besides, the barrel was clogged with some kind of ball. Biro, who woke up, sketched the structure he saw, which reminded him of something, and later, with the help of his chemist brother Georg, he began to develop a writing device based on the principle of a cylinder with ink and a ball. The brothers tried dozens of options until they finally got the item that each of us holds in our hand every day.
Until 1953, scientists struggled to figure out the shape and structure of the DNA molecule, until Professor James Watson of Indiana University had a dream in which he clearly saw a double helix. In the history of the university, it is attested that the doctor saw in a dream a pair of intertwining snakes, and their heads were at different ends of the spiral.
The most important step in the development of physics was the planetary model of the atom proposed by Bohr. According to Bohr's stories, this idea came to him in a dream. Once he dreamed that he was in the Sun - a shining clot of fire-breathing gas - and the planets whistled past him. They revolved around the Sun and were connected with it by thin threads. Suddenly, the gas solidified, the "sun" and "planets" shrank, and Bohr, by his own admission, woke up as if from a shock: he realized that he had discovered the model of the atom that he had been looking for for so long. The "sun" from his dream was nothing more than an immobile core, around which "planets" - electrons revolved.
The life-saving insulin that helps save the lives of many people with diabetes every day was also dreamed up by Canadian physiologist Frederick Banting in a dream. Of course, the effect of insulin on diabetics had already been studied at that time, but no one had yet been able to synthesize the drug itself. Mr. Bunting read an article about the connection between insulin and the pancreas, and thought about this discovery for a very long time. And then in a dream the idea came to him to conduct an experiment on dogs: tie up the animal's pancreas and extract this organ after eight weeks. And in 1921, he did what he had planned, and then introduced the experimental pancreas extract, which atrophied in another dog. And the unbelievable happened: the dog, which was injected with the serum, recovered. Thus, a cure for diabetes was invented.
Oleg Antonov, the Soviet designer of giant aircraft, for a long time could not come up with a suitable plumage for the tail of his An-22 Antey. And so he tried to draw, and so, but now a worthwhile idea came to him precisely in a dream. Such an unusual form struck him so much that he immediately woke up and sketched what he saw. This is how the record-breaking aircraft was designed.
In 1865, the outstanding German chemist August Kekule, after a long and painful search, established the first structural formula of benzene. This discovery was extremely important: in the first approximation, the structure of the benzene molecule was revealed, and with it all its derivatives, which play an extremely significant role in organic chemical production. This class of organic substances (aromatic) for a long time stubbornly resisted the theory of chemical structure. And only thanks to the discovery of Kekule this scientific bastion was taken.
Kekule's formula has undergone many changes over the past time, but the basis, the very principle of its construction - its cyclical nature - remains unchanged. Only its details have varied and, probably, more than once will vary.
Let us now try to analyze the mechanics of Kekule's discovery and, by comparing it with other discoveries similar to it in terms of logical construction, find out some general ways of scientific creativity.
What is the decisive stage of scientific discovery?
The essence of Kekule's discovery
Back in the 50s of the 19th century, Kekule established three important theoretical positions regarding the structure of organic (carbonaceous) compounds:
1) tetravalence of carbon (C).
2) the ability of carbon atoms to connect with each other and form open chains.
Based on these provisions, in 1861, A. M. Butlerov created a theory of chemical structure. She obeyed the whole series of fatty compounds. But a number of aromatic compounds, it would seem, fell out of the circle of new ideas. Its simplest and most important representative, benzene, showed a strange feature: its molecule consisted of six carbon atoms and six atoms, and all of its monosubstituted ones did not give isomers. In other words, no matter what hydrogen in benzene is replaced, say, by chlorine (when benzene is chlorinated) or by a nitro group (during its nitration), the result is always the same chlorobenzene or the same nitrobenzene.
This meant; that in benzene all six hydrogen atoms are exactly the same among themselves, in contrast, for example, to pentane, where, when one hydrogen is replaced by chlorine, three different isomers can be formed.
All attempts to represent the structure of benzene, based on already accepted theoretical positions, ended in vain. If there are six carbon atoms, then, obviously, 18 valence units go to their mutual saturation, and the remaining 6 units - to the connection with six hydrogen atoms.
However, it is easy to see that in all these cases the condition of equivalence of all six hydrogen atoms in the benzene molecule is not satisfied, since the hydrogen atoms at the carbon atoms inside the chain will always be different from the hydrogen atoms at the carbon atoms along its edges. Nevertheless, the solution of the problem of organic chemistry, including Kekule himself, was stubbornly sought in the plane of one or another chain-like structure of benzene.
As soon as the new idea about the carbon ring arose, the very solution of the problem that had tormented the minds of chemists for so long came immediately. Indeed, we must immediately assume that at least two valency units at each carbon atom go to form bonds with neighboring carbon atoms in the benzene ring (this is at least necessary in order for the ring to form); its third unit for each carbon, obviously, must go to combine with hydrogen.
The fourth unit of valency remains as yet unbound. However, given the ability of carbon to form double bonds, it is easy to assume that the remaining free 6 valence units of carbon are pairwise saturated and form three double bonds alternating with three ordinary ones. This is where the final formula comes from. It turned out strict six-axis symmetry for all six carbon atoms, and hence the complete equivalence of all six hydrogen atoms.
Thus was made one of the most remarkable discoveries in the history of organic chemistry. Later versions of this formula were proposed, trying to eliminate its shortcomings, but all of them basically had the Kekule formula.
Back in the 17th century, the German chemist Johann Glauber, who also discovered Glauber's salt - sodium sulfate, distilling coal tar in a glass vessel, obtained a mixture of organic compounds, which contained the later famous substance called ... but, by the way, this is worth talking about in more detail.
Glauber got a mixture of unknown what, which chemists figured out only about two hundred years later. The substance in question was first singled out individually not by a chemist at all, but by the great physicist Michael Faraday from lighting gas (obtained during the pyrolysis of coal, which was produced in abundance in England). But there was still no name, until in 1833 another German distilled the salt of benzoic acid and obtained pure benzene, which is named after the acid. Benzoic acid itself is obtained by sublimation of benzoin resin, or dewy incense. And what is this bird? This is a fragrant resin (a relatively inexpensive substitute for real Middle Eastern incense) that slowly flows from a cut in the trunk of the styrax benzoic tree, which grows in Southeast Asia. The Arabs, confusing Java with Sumatra, called it luban jawi (Java incense). For some reason, the Europeans decided that lu- this is an article, and the remaining stump of the word was turned into "benzoin".
It is curious that in the dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron it is noted that earlier this substance was called "gasoline", as they now call an expensive liquid, obtained, in turn, by distillation of another viscous substance, due to the possession of which no less blood was shed than is poured today gasoline into the snarling herds of cars. By the way, in English, benzene is called "gasoline" even now, and fuel for cars is called "petrol" (in England) or "gas" (in the USA). According to the authors, this confusion significantly violates the harmony of the universe.
Benzene is one of the legendary organic substances. Uncertainties with the structure of its molecule began immediately after the establishment of its chemical formula C 6 H 6 . Since carbon is tetravalent, it is clear that this molecule must have double or triple bonds between carbon atoms, to which only one hydrogen atom is attached - six by six, we no longer have. The triple bond was immediately rejected, because the chemical properties of benzene did not correspond in any way to the properties of acetylene hydrocarbons with such bonds. But something was wrong with double bonds - in the 60s of the century before last, many benzene derivatives were synthesized, obtained by adding various radicals to all six atoms. And it turned out that these atoms are completely equivalent, which could not have happened with a linear or somehow branched structure of the molecule.
The riddle was solved by another German, Friedrich August Kekule. Having become a doctor of chemistry at the age of 23, this child prodigy finally determined the valence of carbon as four; then it was he who became the author of the revolutionary idea of carbon chains. Kekule can rightfully be considered the "inventor" of organic chemistry, because this is the chemistry of carbon chains (now, of course, this concept has expanded somewhat).
Since 1858, Kekule has been thinking hard about the structure of the benzene molecule. By that time, both Butlerov's theory of structure and Loschmidt's formulas, which were first compiled on the basis of atomic theory, were already known, but nothing worked with benzene. And then a legend arises - the cyclic formula of carbon was dreamed of by Kekula in a dream. This is a very beautiful formula, even two, because we can arrange double bonds in a molecule in different ways.
According to legend, Kekula dreamed of a snake made of carbon atoms, biting its own tail. By the way, this is a well-known figure - ouroboros (from the Greek "tail-devouring"). Although this symbol has many meanings, the most common interpretation describes it as a representation of eternity and infinity, in particular the cyclical nature of life: the alternation of creation and destruction, life and death, constant rebirth and death. Educated, knowing four languages from childhood, Kekule, of course, knew about ouroboros.
Here the authors are forced to make some remark about the nature of the thinking of the layman, the so-called "common man", although who admits that he is a simple man? (Personally, we - for nothing!) So, Kekula dreamed of benzene. Mendeleev - the Periodic Table, an angel showed Mesrop Mashtots the Armenian alphabet in a dream, and Dante - the text of the Divine Comedy. Who else had a dream? It seems to us that such legends somehow flatter the vanity of the layman - after all, everyone can dream, including me, but what exactly is another question. Needless to say, Kekule worked on establishing the formula for benzene, published in 1865, for more than seven years every day, seven days a week, since turning off your head for the weekend is almost impossible. Mendeleev was engaged in the classification of elements in general for a decade and a half! The conclusion is simple: we must not sleep, but work, which, by the way, Boris Pasternak wrote: “Don’t sleep, don’t sleep, artist, / Don’t indulge in sleep, / You are a hostage to eternity / Captured by time.”
By the way, the legend of Kekule's dream is sung in the poems of Alexei Tsvetkov, where the poet (who studied at the Faculty of Chemistry at Odessa University) reflects on the place of chemistry in our lives:
if a painter would paint in oils
sleeping Friedrich Kekule is a snake
biting her own tail with a hint
on the structure of the benzene ring
kekule himself in a cuirass helmet at a distance
apparently overcame on a short halt
against the background of a crimson dawn marked
sensitive profile of a hobbled horse
but before the formula is revealed to the world
someone should interrupt with a kiss
natural scientist's magical dream
fell asleep on the eve of the sedan slipped
poisoned french apple
the homeland is threatened with the loss of priority
the snake turned into a carbon ring
valence bonds oscillate melodiously
the mission can be entrusted to urania
museum of a related discipline since
chemistry has no own
but chu with a light step because of the virgin trees
allegory of germany she kisses the hero
lightly strikes the sword on the shoulder
and calls him von stradonits both
are carried away in a captivating dance
this is where the choir comes in
at least that's how I see it
the boys throng out onto the stage
stuffing plastic bags
dance the glory of chemistry to the queen of sciences
mistress of mustard gas goddess of phosgene
However, painting has long been powerless
it's more like a ballet libretto
The picture is rather bleak, to be honest, but the authors are convinced that high poetry enlightens, even when it touches on the darkest topics.
Let's get back to our benzene. In general, Kekule's colleagues did not like that two formulas could be attributed to the same substance. Somehow this is not human, that is, not chemically somehow. What they just didn’t come up with, up to the formula of benzene in the form of a three-dimensional Ladenburg prism. However, note that all the other formulas in this figure are cyclic, that is, Kekule has already solved the main problem.
The chemical reactions of benzene with various substances did not confirm the correctness of any of these formulas, we had to return to benzene a la Kekule, but with some addition - they came up with the idea that double bonds jump from one carbon atom to another and those two Kekule formulas instantly pass into each other, or, using a special term, oscillate.
Without spreading our thoughts along the benzoic styrax tree, let's outline the current state of affairs with the molecule of our hexagonal handsome man. There are no more double bonds in it than monkeys clasping their hands. The carbon atoms in the plane are connected by ordinary single bonds. And below and above this plane clouds of so-called pi bonds hover, making the chemical abilities of each of the 6 carbon atoms identical. We do not write a manual on chemistry, but we have fun to the best of our ability (which we sincerely wish to the dear reader), so that those who are especially interested can turn to any organic chemistry textbook, even a school one, for detailed information. The benzene molecule is now depicted as follows (the ring is one of the clouds that seems to hover over the plane of the page of our book).
Benzene is the best-known representative of the so-called aromatic compounds, which (1) contain a benzene-type ring or rings, (2) are relatively stable, and (3) despite being unsaturated (the presence of pi bonds), they are prone to substitution rather than addition reactions. Thus says Zarathustra, that is, the encyclopedia! Actually, the aromatic system (according to the same source) is a special property of some chemical compounds, due to which the ring of unsaturated bonds exhibits abnormally high stability. The term "aromatic" was proposed because the first such substances discovered had a pleasant smell. Now everything is not quite so - many aromatic compounds smell quite disgusting.
Why do we need benzene, except, of course, purely human curiosity? In the sense, what is it eaten with and eaten? But seriously, benzene is a toxic, colorless, flammable liquid, slightly soluble in water and difficult to decompose. It is used as an additive to motor fuels, in chemical synthesis, as an excellent solvent - sometimes it is called "organic water", which can dissolve anything. That is why it is used to isolate alkaloids from plants, fats from bones, meat and nuts, to dissolve rubber adhesives, rubber, and any other paints and varnishes.
The carcinogenicity of benzene to humans has been unambiguously established. In addition, it causes blood diseases and damages the chromosomes. Symptoms of poisoning: irritation of the mucous membranes, dizziness, nausea, feeling of intoxication and euphoria (benzene substance abuse). Due to the low solubility of benzene in water, it can exist on its surface in the form of a gradually evaporating film. Consequences of short-term inhalation of concentrated benzene vapors: dizziness, convulsions, memory loss, death.
We found two references to benzene in Russian poetry. And, frankly, both of them disappointed us. Here is a young Boris Kornilov (1932) wrote the poem "Family Council". See what an energetic start, what beautiful rhymes:
Night, covered with bright varnish,
looks into the room through the window.
There are men sitting on the benches -
all dressed in cloth.
The oldest, he is angry like a bitch,
grief in the red corner is pressed -
hands washed with benzene,
are on his knees.
Feet dried up like logs
the face is striped with horror,
and short butter exactly
freezes in the hair.
This is an evil fist with sons. For some reason, he really doesn’t like that the new government is going to take away all the good from him, and then shoot him or, at best, send him to Siberia with his family. Accordingly, the author portrays him as an operetta villain, playing with poetic muscles and not caring too much about the plausibility of details. For some reason, the young author (25 years old) thinks that cloth is a fabric for rich world-eaters who grease their hair with squishy (that is, animals - must be butter). And they wash their hands with benzene - for the sake of a bright rhyme with "he is angry", since it is clear that this substance has never been found in the village, and even chemists do not wash their hands - why on earth? But why not write for the sake of ideological consistency. Moreover, in terms of energy and imagery, these poems are quite, quite good. This must be why the author was not treated kindly for these poems, but was accused of "fierce kulak propaganda." And then, of course, they shot him.
And the great Blok also upset us at first. Benzene for him is only the joy of drug addicts. Meanwhile, it can be used for these purposes only out of great desperation, it is a weak drug and terribly poisonous. And the poems are called "Comet".
You threaten us with the last hour,
From the blue eternity a star!
But our maidens - according to atlases
Bring out silk to the world: yes!
But they wake up the night with the same voice -
Steel and smooth - trains!
All night pour light into your villages
Berlin and London and Paris
And we do not know surprise
Following your path through the glass roofs,
Benzene brings healing
Matchish is spreading to the stars!
Our world, spreading the tail of a peacock,
Like you, filled with a riot of dreams:
Through Simplon, seas, deserts,
Through the scarlet whirlwind of heavenly roses,
Through the night, through the mist - they strive from now on
Flight - herds of steel dragonflies!
Threat, threaten over your head,
Terrible beauty stars!
Shut up angrily behind your back,
Monotonous screw crack!
But death is not terrible for the hero,
While the dream is mad!
However, after a careful reading of this poem, the authors had a suspicion that it was not written without irony, since the author opposes some rather mundane and even vulgar achievements of mankind (“glass roofs”, embroidering girls, “trains”, “steel dragonflies, etc.). It is no coincidence that among all these signs of a well-fed and contented life, it suddenly turns out that our world has “spread its tail of a peacock,” so that the “violence” of its “dreams” begins to sound rather doubtful. It is possible that benzene was inserted instead of opium in order to mock the unlucky drug addict.
Of the interesting derivatives of our hero, we point to phenol, which in its chemical structure is benzene with an attached hydroxy group -OH. Once it was called carbolic acid or simply carbolic acid, which in the form of an aqueous solution makes an excellent disinfectant liquid. For the first time, the English doctor Joseph Lister used carbolic disinfection when dressing patients with complex fractures (in America, the Listerine mouthwash is still popular, although it no longer contains any carbolic acid). Until that time, any serious injury was almost always complicated by infection, and even with amputations of limbs, infection was almost inevitable. Appendicitis was considered a fatal disease - now a simple operation to remove the appendix often ended in exitus letalis. One-legged English pirate John Silver from the famous novel by Robert Louis Stevenson "Treasure Island" is a miracle of British medicine of the 18th century. In fact, with such operations survived well, if one out of twenty patients. Carbolic destroys the tissues around the wound, but also kills the bacteria in it, so Lister's patients recovered remarkably quickly. Then Lister began to spray the operating room with this substance. Since then, a solution of carbolic acid has been used to disinfect rooms, clothing, and much more. In both World War I and World War II, carbolic acid was widely used in field surgery, mainly due to the lack of other, more advanced disinfectants. Today, internal antiseptics are preferred - primarily sulfonamides and antibiotics. And we are left with “the roar of a carbolic guitar,” wrote Mandelstam in 1935, recalling the strumming of the ukulele, which the poet Kirsanov played behind the “hacky wall” of his “evil Moscow dwelling” (while it still existed).
To conclude this chapter, a compound was synthesized in 1978 that might well be called "superbenzene." It is a hydrocarbon consisting of 12 benzene rings fused with each other in the form of a macrocyclic hexagon. At one of the chemical congresses, this substance was solemnly named "kekulen" - it is clear in whose honor.
And if - what a sin to conceal! - we have a weakness for benzene for the sophistication of its structure, then kekulen deserves even more passionate love, no less than the fullerenes described in the chapter on carbon.
According to statistics, a modern person sleeps less than the body needs, which is why the percentage of nervous disorders and neuroses is growing. In addition, sleep is not only a necessary rest for the body, but also an opportunity to find the right solution, idea or answer to a difficult question.
Folk wisdom says: the morning is wiser than the evening. And science confirms the fact that sometimes many hours of continuous work does not give the desired results, leading astray. During sleep, the brain continues to work continuously, formatting the received data: all unnecessary information is discarded, and important data is logically structured. Sometimes brilliant ideas come in a dream.
PERIODIC TABLE OF MENDELEEV
Perhaps the most famous case of a great idea that came in a dream. Allegedly, this version of the opening of the table was distributed among students by Professor A.A. Inostrantsev, as an example of the psychological impact of intensive work on the human brain. However, it is a mistake to believe that a brilliant solution that changed the entire course of science was so easy for a scientist. Mendeleev thought about his table of chemical elements for more than one year, but for a long time he could not present them in the form of a logical and visual system. “Everything came together in my head, but I can’t express it in a table,” said the great scientist, who often works “without sleep and rest.” Shortly before the opening of the table, or rather, its systematic generalization, Mendeleev worked for three days in a row, when he closed his eyes, he saw in a dream several missing elements and a diagram of their arrangement. Waking up, Mendeleev immediately wrote down what he saw on a piece of paper. It is known that the chemist himself did not really like it when they recalled the story about the dream table: “I’ve been thinking about it for maybe twenty years, and you think: I sat and suddenly ... it’s ready.”
FORMULA OF BENZENE
The structure of benzene was first established in 1865 by the German chemist Friedrich August Kekule. By that time, benzene had already been synthesized, but the exact formula of the substance was unknown. The cyclic structural formula of benzene, which has the form of a regular hexagon, Kekule saw in a dream: the formula of benzene appeared in the form of snakes biting each other by the tail. According to one version, this thought was brought to him by a ring in the form of two intertwined snakes made of gold and platinum, according to another - the pattern of a Persian carpet. Upon waking, Kekule spent the rest of the night developing a hypothesis and concluded that the structure of benzene is a closed cycle with six carbon atoms. Interestingly, a few years earlier, the chemist had already had a strange dream, dozing off in an omnibus in London, where he was analyzing drugs. Then, half asleep, before Kekule appeared “atoms frolicking before our eyes. Two small atoms paired up, and the larger one took on the smaller ones. Another larger one is holding three or four smaller ones." Waking up, the scientist concluded that carbon atoms can be connected in long chains. It is believed that this dream laid the foundations of organic chemistry.
SHOT PRODUCTION METHOD
The modern method of making shot was invented by William Watts, a Bristol plumber, in 1872. Watts had a dream: he was walking in the rain, but instead of drops of water, lead balls fell on him. Then the locksmith decided to conduct an experiment by melting a small amount of lead and throwing it out of the bell tower into a barrel of water. When Watts poured water from the barrel, he found that the lead had hardened into small balls. It turned out that during the flight, the lead droplets acquire the correct round shape and harden. Prior to the discovery of Watts, the production of lead bullets and shot for guns was an extremely costly, long and laborious undertaking. The lead was rolled into a sheet, which was then cut into pieces. Or the shot was cast in molds, each separately.
ARMENIAN ALPHABET
The need for a national alphabet arose in Armenia in 301 AD, after the adoption of Christianity. It was on this that Mesrop Mashtots, a missionary and preacher of Christianity, began to work hard, later canonized by the Armenian Church. Faced with difficulties during the sermons, when he had to be both a reader and a translator at the same time, otherwise no one would understand him, he decided to invent a script for the Armenian language. For these purposes, Mesrop went to Mesopotamia, where he studied different alphabets and scripts in the library in the city of Edessa, but he could not imagine everything in the form of a system. Then Mesrop began to pray, after which he had a dream: a hand writing on a stone. "The stone, like snow, retained traces of inscriptions." After the vision, the preacher finally managed to arrange the letters in order and give them names. The Armenian alphabet created by Mashtots is still used today almost unchanged. The current alphabet consists of 39 letters.
AN-22 "ANTEY"
The design of the Soviet giant aircraft, namely the idea of its tail, came to the aircraft designer Oleg Antonov, by his own admission, in a dream. The designer spent a long time drawing, drawing, trying to apply a special approach, but nothing worked. “One night, in a dream, the tail of an aircraft, unusual in shape, was clearly outlined before my eyes.” The dream was so unexpected that the designer woke up and sketched an unusual design on a piece of paper. Waking up in the morning, Antonov could not understand why the idea had not occurred to him earlier. Thus, the world's first wide-body aircraft appeared in the USSR, setting more than 40 world records.
INSULIN
The idea of producing the hormone insulin, which has been saving the lives of patients with diabetes for 80 years, came to the Canadian physiologist Frederick Banting in a dream. Banting was obsessed with the idea of defeating diabetes, his childhood friend died from this disease at a young age. By that time, diabetes had already been studied, and the role of insulin in the treatment of the disease was also known, but so far no one has been able to synthesize insulin. One day, Banting stumbled upon an article in a medical journal about the relationship between diabetes and the pancreas, after which, waking up in the middle of the night, the scientist made an entry: “ligate the pancreatic ducts in dogs. Wait six to eight weeks. Delete and extract." After this dream, Banting conducted experiments on dogs: on July 27, 1921, a dog with a removed pancreas was injected with an extract of the atrophied pancreas of another dog. The dog recovered, the level of glucose in her blood dropped to normal. A little later, Banting managed to obtain insulin from a bovine pancreas, and in 1922 insulin was first used to treat diabetes in humans: Banting injected a seriously ill 14-year-old boy, Leonard Thompson, and thereby saved his life. Banting received the Nobel Prize for his discovery.
Computer generated image of six insulin molecules associated in a hexamer.
STRUCTURE OF THE ATOM
The founder of atomic physics, the Danish scientist Niels Bohr, made a discovery in 1913 that changed the scientific picture of the world and brought worldwide recognition to the author himself. The scientist dreamed that he was in the sun from burning gas, around which planets revolve, connected with it by thin threads. Suddenly the gas solidified and the sun and planets shrank. Waking up, Bohr realized that he had just seen in a dream the structure of an atom: its nucleus appeared as a fixed sun, around which "planets" - electrons - revolved.
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