A chemist said a dream of a snake eating its own tail solved a molecule's shape

Chemists knew benzene's formula but couldn't explain how its atoms fit together until August Kekule described dozing by the fire in 1865 and picturing a snake biting its own tail. He woke with the answer: a closed ring of six carbon atoms. The ring structure became one of the foundations of organic chemistry.

— August Kekule, Kekule's Benzene Ring — Berichte der deutschen chemischen Gesellschaft, 1865