Kekule von Stradonitz, Friedrich August, << KAY kuh `lay` fuhn SHTRAH doh nihts, FREE drihkh OW goost >> (1829-1896), was a German chemist and professor. He was the first to develop the idea that the forces coming from the atom, or valences, are distributed geometrically, like the points of a tetrahedron. He also recognized that where several carbons occur together in a compound, they are joined to each other. These theories enabled Kekule to propose a molecular structure for benzene that is still used. He is generally considered to be the originator of the structure theory of organic chemistry and has been called “an intuitive genius.” Kekule was born in Darmstadt.
