American Scientist

To the Editors:

I found Deirdre Barrett’s article “When the Answer Comes in a Dream” (July–August) fascinating because I had no knowledge that researchers had delved into such functioning of the human mind, and because I have personally experienced solving problems in my sleep after struggling unsuccessfully to solve them while awake.

In 1957 I was a student at the University of Pittsburgh working on a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering. Two courses of physics for engineers were required for the degree, with heavy loads of homework consisting mostly of mathematical problems that took hours to solve.

I would often drive home with an unsolved problem on my mind and fall into bed exhausted, where I would sleep for about five or six hours before having to wake up and get ready for the morning commute. After the first few weeks of this routine I began to wake in the night having solved the problem. As the semester progressed, it became increasingly common for me to solve difficult problems in my sleep. As Barrett suggests in her guidelines, “How to Incubate a Dream,” I placed a pad of engineering paper, a pencil, and my slide rule on the counter in the bathroom near my bedroom each night. I did not purposely try to dream about the troubling problem, and in fact never recalled dreaming about it, but perhaps once a week, sometimes more, I would wake up and go into the bathroom, where I would quickly write down the problem and its solution.

All these years later I enjoyed greatly Barrett’s article and learning that perhaps my experience was not so unusual.

William E. Carter
Washington, PA