The structure of benzene that we know today was deduced from a dream! Benzene is a colourless liquid and its structure has fascinated scientists since its discovery.
Benzene was first discovered by the English scientist Michael Faraday in 1825. Archibald Scott Couper in 1858 and Joseph Loschmidt in 1861 suggested possible structures that contained multiple double bonds or multiple rings; however the chemists found it difficult to make conclusions without sufficient proof.
A widely accepted suggestion regarding the structure of benzene was made in 1865 by the German chemist Friedrich August Kekule. He published a paper in French proposing that benzene is made up of a ring of six carbon atoms with alternating single and double bonds. It was said that this solution came to Kekule in a dream in the form of a snake that was eating its own tail. The cyclic nature of benzene was confirmed in 1929 by crystallographer Kathleen Lonsdale.
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