4 World-Changing ideas that Came from Dreams
::The theory of relativity::
A field of cows inspired Albert Einstein's theory of relativity,
is one of the most important ideas that ever came out of sleep. In his dream, Einstein was telling a farmer about cows being surrounded by an electric fence, but the farmer saw something different. Einstein awakened with the realization that the same event could vary from different perspectives
::The Periodic Table::
Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev was exhausted from three days of trying to classify the 56 elements when he decided to sleep on it. "I saw in a dream a table where all the elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper," Mendeleev wrote in his diary, "Only in one place did a correction later seem necessary."
::The model of the atom::
In 1922, Danish physicist Niels Bohr received the Nobel Peace Prize in Physics for designing the model of the atom. He was snoozing away when he had a vision of the planets attached to pieces of string circling the sun. He said, "Sleep is not just vital to health, but the greatest source of creativity," explains Alex Tew, co-founder of Calm.
::analytical geometry::
On November 10, 1619, German soldier Rene Descartes had a series of three dreams, which went on to change the course of his life-and our modern world. The dreams, particularly the third one, spurred him to the nature of reality. Determined to find the truth in human knowledge, he quit the army the next year to study mathematics and philosophy. He then went on to create the field of analytical geometry and became the founder of modern rationalism.