Werner, Alfred dream

However, in 1890 a young Swiss chemist named Alfred Werner, who had just obtained a Ph.D. in the field of organic chemistry, became so interested in these compounds that he apparently even dreamed about them. In the middle of one night Werner awoke realizing that he had discovered the correct explanation for the constitution of these compounds. Writing furiously the rest of that night and into the late afternoon of the following... 

Alfred Werner awoke at 2 a.m. one night in late 1892. In a dream he had solved the riddle of the constitution of molecular compounds ... 

One night in late 1892, at the age of 26, Alfred Werner was awakened from his sleep at two in the morning. He had just had a dream about the nature of bonding in coordination compounds. For the next 15 h, he recorded his insights in what eventually became his third scientific paper. Unlike the chain theory, Werner postulated that all of the cobalt compounds in Table 15.1 had two types of valences primary (Hauptvalenz) and secondary valence. Furthermore, every metal had a fixed coordination number equal to the number of ligands that were directly bonded to... 

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