The Science of Sleep: Five Discoveries Made by Sleeping Scientists

Perhaps the most famous of the scientific dreams was the periodic table of elements, the dream chemist Dmitry Mendeleyev. This table, of course, was created not one year and not one scientist.

In 1668, the first 15 chemical elements were named by the Irishman Robert Boyle, a hundred years later the list was brought to 35 Frenchman Antoine Lavoisier, and then Mendeleyev worked on it. He is credited with the following phrase: "I saw in my dream a table in which the elements were located as necessary. I woke up, immediately recorded the data on a piece of paper and fell asleep again. " It is difficult to say whether Mendeleev really said this.

Albert Einstein said that his whole scientific career is a rethinking of the dream, which he saw as a teenager. In that dream, Einstein saw him riding a sleigh down a steep snow-covered slope, gathering speed at which all the surrounding colors merge into one spot. This dream inspired his whole career: he was thinking about what happens when the speed of light is reached, researchers note the scientist's life. Biographers are sure that the future author of the theory of relativity made many of his discoveries thanks to sleep.