Inventions Inspired by Dreams
The subconscious mind is very powerful. Provided the conscious mind absorbs plenty of data with attention while awake, the subconscious mind can process and make sense of the data while asleep. Some great scientific discoveries in history are evidence to the importance of sleep and dreams in the operation of our minds.
1. Kekule-Discovery of the Structure of Benzene
August Kekulé had been worrying about how the atoms in benzene are arranged. On a cold night in 1865, he worked on the problem in his room. Unable to find a solution, he turned his chair to the fire and dozed. He began dreaming of atoms dancing. Gradually the atoms arranged themselves into the shape of a snake. Then the snake turned around and bit its own tail. The image of the snake, tail in its mouth, continued to dance before his eyes. When Kekulé awoke, he realized what the dream had been telling him: Benzene molecules are made up of rings of carbon atoms. Understanding these aromatic rings opened up an enormously important new field of chemistry – aromatic chemistry and a new understanding of chemical bonding.
2 . Mendeleev - Periodic Table
Pioneering chemist Dimitry Mendeleev spent 10 years trying to create a pattern that connected the chemical elements together. He wanted to organize the 65 known elements somehow. He knew there was a pattern to be discerned, and it had something to do with atomic weight, but the pattern remained elusive. One Februrary night, just as he was on the verge of a major breakthrough, he fell asleep and dreamt up the idea he’d been searching for. Writing in his diary, Mendeleev said, “I saw in a dream a table where all the elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper.”
3. Niels Bohr - Structure of The Atom
In a dream, Niels Bohr saw the nucleus of the atom with electrons spinning around it – like planets going around the sun. He had a gut feeling that it was accurate, so dedicate his research to proving his theory. Low and behold, he was spot on and won the Nobel Prize for Physics for his breakthrough.
4. Srinivasa Ramanujan -Thousands of Mathematical Ideas
Srinivasa Ramanujan had negligible formal training in mathematics. He died tragically young, aged 32. In his short lifetime he produced almost 4,000 proofs, identities, conjectures and equations in pure mathematics. The Cambridge University mathematician Godfrey H. Hardy, who worked with Ramanujan, expressed the thought that if mathematicians were rated on the basis of pure talent on a scale from 0 to 100, he himself would be worthy of 25, J.E. Littlewood 30, David Hilbert 80, and Srinivasa Ramanujan 100. Ramanujan said that the Hindu goddess Namagiri would appear in his dreams, showing him mathematical proofs, which he would write down when he awoke. He described one of his dreams as follows: “While asleep, I had an unusual experience. There was a red screen formed by flowing blood, as it were. I was observing it. Suddenly a hand began to write on the screen. I became all attention. That hand wrote a number of elliptic integrals. They stuck to my mind. As soon as I woke up, I committed them to writing.”
5. Alfred Russel Wallace- Evolution by Natural Selection
Alfred Russel Wallace traveled in Brazil and South East Asia recording species, trying to understand the differences he saw when species were separated by geographical barriers. For years he asked how new species could arise, but could find no answer. In 1858, he had an extreme dream, in the shape of hallucinations caused by a tropical fever. When the fever had gone, he found that the theory of evolution by natural selection had come to him.
6. Elias Howe, Sewing Machine
In 1845, Elias Howe dreamt that he’d been captured by cannibals who gave him an ultimatum – he had to invent a sewing machine within 24 hours or suffer a painful death. He failed, so they stabbed him to repeatedly with spears that had a hole in the tip. Howe realised that he had to put an eye in the needle to create the lock-stich sewing machine he’d always struggled to invent.
7. Albert Einstein, Speed of Light
“Einstein said his entire career was an extended meditation on a dream he had as a teenager,” explained the Rev. John W. Price in an interview with John H. Lienhard, professor emeritus of mechanical engineering and history at the University of Houston, on the radio show “Engines of Our Ingenuity.” “He dreamt that he was riding a sled down a steep, snowy slope and, as he approached the speed of light in his dream, the colors all blended into one. He spent much of his career, inspired by that dream, thinking about what happens at the speed of light.”
8. James Watson - DNA
Until Dr James Watson saw a spiral staircase in a dream in 1953, no one had developed the idea of a double helix spiral structure for our DNA. In fact, thanks to sleeping that fateful night, Watson went on to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962. This all sounds a little far-fetched? Remember, dreams organise and consolidate ideas, images, memories and bits of information that you gather up when you’re awake throughout the day. Letting your mind wander during sleep can lead to greater creativity.