Dreams always contain many unsolved mysteries, many of which seem to be related to the future.
In the past, many scientists and writers partly relied on their dreams to produce lifelong works.
Dmitri Mendeleev (1834-1907) at that time cherished the idea of systematically arranging 65 known chemical elements.
Chemist Mendeleev (1834-1907).
Mendeleev also predicted the elements would arrange by atomic mass but was unable to form a clear table.
“In a dream, I saw a table of elements arranged very naturally. When I woke up, I immediately wrote it down,” Mendeleev’s words are quoted by Russian chemist Bonifaty Mikhailovich Kedrov (1903-1985) in On the Question of Scientific Creativity.
Periodic table of chemical elements in 1871.
Mendeleev also predicted some properties of unknown elements in the hope of filling his periodic table.
Later, the periodic table expanded on the discoveries and synthesis of new elements and the development of new theoretical models.
Niels Bohr (1885-1962).
Niels Bohr (1885-1962) was a Danish physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (1922) for his famous work on the atomic model.
According to Edwina Portocarrero from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Bohr shared that he once dreamed of sitting on the Sun and all the planets flying around on a small rope.
When he woke up, he successfully studied an atomic model consisting of a small positively charged nucleus and electrons moving around in different orbits, similar to the structure of the solar system, only gravity conduction is replaced by electrostatic force.
Elias Howe and the sewing machine forerunner of today’s machines.
The name Elias Howe (1819-1867) is associated with the sewing machine. Although he was not the inventor of the sewing machine, he greatly improved the sewing machine and received a US patent.
In his dream, Elias Howe is asked to build a sewing machine for a fierce king in a foreign country with a deadline of 24 hours, or else he will be executed. Due to failure to complete, Howe was executed by soldiers with spears pierced through the head.
Then Elias Howe woke up and got to work right away. Howe designed a curved needle, placing the needle hole at the pointed end – formerly at the foot of the needle – and combining it with the bobbin to create a seam.
Einstein in his youth.
“Einstein says his entire career has been a contemplation stretched out of a dream of the past,” said John H. Lienhard, professor emeritus of mechanical engineering and history at the University of Houston (USA). shared on the radio show Engines of Our Ingenuity.
When he was young, Einstein had a dream that he was riding on a sleigh going downhill very quickly. When Einstein and the car travel close to the speed of light, all the colors blend into one.
After waking up, he spends most of his time thinking and studying what happens at the speed of light.
The benzene circle used to be a mystery to scientists.
Benzene is an organic compound that was discovered by British scientist Michael Faraday (1791-1867) in 1825, but its structure was still not understood a few decades later.
Scientists knew that benzene’s structure was very symmetric, but had no idea how the six tetravalent carbons and six monovalent hydrogen atoms would be symmetrically arranged to make it stable.
In 1865, Friedrich August Kekulé (1829-1896), a German chemist, fell asleep next to the stove when he was tired of working. In the dream, he saw carbon and hydrogen atoms connected and dancing in a chain along with an image of a snake turning its head, holding its own tail and spinning in front of him.
Kekulé wakes up and realizes that’s the structure of benzene: a hexagon with a carbon atom at each vertex.
Otto Loewi (1873-1961).
The night before Easter 1921, Otto Loewi (1873-1961), a sleeping Austrian biologist, suddenly woke up, took a notepad, and then lay down to sleep again, not understanding what he had drawn in the morning.
The next day, while sleeping, the idea just came back. This is an experimental method that can be used to prove whether or not the hypothesis that Loewi put forward 17 years ago is correct.
Loewi immediately woke up and rushed to the laboratory, dissected two frog hearts and soaked them in physiological saline, one heart kept the 10th nerve, the second did not have the 10th nerve.
He used electrodes to stimulate the 10th nerve of the first heart, causing the heart to beat slowly. After a few minutes, transfer the solution to soak the first heart into the device containing the second heart.
Description of Loewi’s experiment – (Image: Important7).
As a result, the second heart also began to beat, thereby confirming that neurons can communicate with each other by releasing chemicals. For this discovery, Loewi received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1936.
Writer Mary Shelley.
Mary Shelley (1797-1851) was an English writer, best known for her novels Frankenstein and the wife of the romantic poet Percy Shelley (1792-1822).
While on vacation with her husband, poet Lord Byron (1788-1824) and writer John Polidori (1795-1821), on Lake Geneva, Switzerland, Byron set up a horror story competition between four people.
Then, one rainy night, Mary dreamed of a student kneeling in front of an object shaped like a man but the parts were grafted from different bodies. This is the idea for Frankenstein to be born, written by Mary at the age of 18 and completed at the age of 20.
Drawing depicting the book, published in 1831 by artist Theodor von Holst.
Frankenstein is the story of a student Victor Frankenstein creating a creature from the organs of a dead person, bringing the creature to life but then banishing his “spirit child” .
Hatred causes the creature to decide to take revenge by killing Frankenstein’s wife and then killing its creator.
Later, many plays and films were inspired by the classic novel by Mary Shelley.