If you want to become a chemist, you will have to ruin your health. If you don’t ruin your health studying, you won’t accomplish anything these days in chemistry.{Liebig’s advice to August Kekulé.}

People have wracked their brains for an explanation of benzene and how the celebrated man, August Kekulé, managed to come up with the concept of the benzene theory. With regard to the last point especially,...