Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz

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For the genealogist and son of Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz, see Stephan Kekulé von Stradonitz

Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz (September 7, 1829 – July 13, 1896) was a German organic chemist.

He was born in Darmstadt to an old Bohemian noble family. He was professor at Ghent (1858-1865) and at Bonn. He studied various carbon compounds, especially benzene, proposing in 1865 a carbon ring for its structure. In 1857 Kekulé had proposed that carbon was tetravalent. William Odling (1829-1921) had earlier made this suggestion in a famous lecture delivered at the Royal Institution in 1855 (which Kekulé may well have attended).

He wrote that he discovered the ring shape of the benzene molecule after dreaming of a snake seizing its own tail, a common symbol in many ancient cultures known as the Ouroboros. This dream came to him after years of studying the nature of carbon-carbon bonds. Kekulé claimed to have solved the problem of how carbon atoms could bond to up to four other atoms at the same time. While his claims were well publicized and accepted, by the early 1920s Kekulé's own biographer came to the conclusion that Kekulé's understanding of the tetravalent nature of carbon bonding depended on the previous research of Archibald Scott Couper (1831-1892). Furthermore, the Austrian chemist Josef Loschmidt (1821-1895) had earlier posited a cyclic structure for benzene (and many other cyclic systems) as early as 1861, although he had not actually proved this structure to be correct.

In 1895 Kekulé was ennobled by Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, giving him the right to add "von Stradonitz" to his name, referring to an ancient possession of his family in Stradonice, Bohemia. Of the first five Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, his students won three.