13 July 09

Today marks the anniversary of the death, in 1896, of August Kekulé, a German organic chemist who is most famous for developing the concept of a "ring" structure for the benzene molecule. He awoke from a dream about a snake swallowing its own tail and realized that the results of many of benzene's reactions could best be explained by assuming that its six carbon atoms were bound to each other as a closed hexagon. This tie was presented to me as a Father's Day gift by David and Rachel Haskins, with a long list of non-chemistry holidays on which to wear it!