Technikatörténeti szemle 20. (1993)

TANULMÁNYOK - Tansjö, Levi. The Fictitious Kekulé-dream

LEVI TANSJO* THE FICTITIOUS KEKULÉ-DREAM August Kekulé's paper (1) on the constitution of aromatic compounds in 1865 is — may Woodward in his heaven and Hoffmann at Cornell forgive me — the most brilliant piece of scientific prediction to be found in the whole range of organic chemistry. With that paper as a guide-star, Kekulé and his students and other chemists in a few years incorporated into the newly established structure theory hundreds of members of the giant family of hydrogen-poor compounds, which Kekulé called aromatic. And this research was done not only for the glory of science, but was immediately applied in the new, big, and before long mighty industry based on coal tar. No wonder that the German Chemical Society in 1890 — 25 years after 1865 — arranged a „Kekulé-Feier". It took place on 11 March, 5-7:30 p.m. in the Berlin city hall and was intended to be a „Fest" (2). That day, however, Germany was in the middle of the deep political crisis which had started with the social-democratic success in the general election three weeks before. There was only one week left until Bismarck was finally forced to resign. Everyone In the decorated „Festsaal" in the city hall knew why the emperor Wllhelm II, the minister-president von Bismarck and all ministers except the minister of education, von Gossler, had excused themselves. More important things were going on In Berlin. We can imagine a deep disappointment in the city hall: no Kaiser! At about 7 o'clock the hero of the occasion had to give his speech of acknowledgement. In the middle of It, he raised the question of whether he was a „Genie", since the benzene theory sometimes had been described as „genial". If Kekulé had been a very judicious person he would of course 'University of Lund, P.O.Box 124, S-221 00 Lund, Sweden "Delivered at the „First 'Mineralkontor' International Conference on the History of Chemistry and Chemical Industry" in Veszprém, August 12-26, 1991.