simply
W
hen you’re in urgent need of
a creative idea or an answer
to a niggling problem, going
to bed and switching o for the day is
not usually the solution that fi rst springs
to mind. But when a surprising number
of major scientifi c breakthroughs and
artworks have come straight out of
slumber, perhaps it should be!
According to a survey by Calm, one
of the most important ideas that ever
came out of sleep was Einstein’s theory
of relativity, which was prompted by a
dream he had about a fi eld of cows seen
from di erent perspectives.
You know that confusing periodic table
you had to memorise in high school?
Dmitry Mendeleev, the Russian chemist
and inventor behind it, apparently
decided to take a short rest after a three-
day work bender. During his nap, he saw
the table perfectly in his mind with each
of the elements in their correct place and
jotted it down as soon as he woke up.
Lacking inspiration for a writing
contest, author Mary Shelley decided
to hit the hay and had a nightmare
about a phantasm of a man who thanks
to a powerful engine, started to show
strange signs of life. Waving her writer’s
block goodbye, she had her idea forwhat became the novel Frankenstein.
Another famous writer who has sleep to
thank is Stephanie Meyer, the author of
the popular Twilight series. One night
she dreamt about an unusual romance
between a sparkly vampire and a human- a dream that was so out of the ordinary
that she immediately wrote about it to try
and hold it in her memory.
Paul McCartney from The Beatles had
a similar experience when he awoke from
sleep and headed straight to the piano
with a lovely tune in his head. Believe
it or not, that turned out to be the hit
song Yesterday.
If it wasn’t for sleep, we might not
have sewing machines either. American
inventor Elias Howe couldn’t get the
needle to work until he had a dream that
he was being executed for his failure on
the project, and fi gured out the solution
just before his death. The next day, his
sewing machine was complete.
When Jack Nicklaus, one of the
greatest golfers of all time, lost his
mojo for a while, he awoke from a dream
in which his world-class game had
returned. He realised he was holding
his club di erently in the dream world,
so he changed his grip accordingly and
was back in the game!
TEXT
ERIN FISHER
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oursel
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optima
hea