Dreams have been responsible for some major creative and scientific discoveries in the course of human history.No longer dismissed by psychologists as random neuron firings or meaningless fantasies, dreams are now considered an ongoing thought process that just happens to occur while we are asleep.Here are 10 remarkable dreams of some of the world's most prominent scientists, writers, musicians, mathematicians and inventors whose moments of dream insight went down on record.

1. Mary Shelley: The World's First Sci-Fi Novel In 1816, the story of Frankenstein, often cited as the world's first science fiction novel, was inspired by a vivid nightmare. At just 18 years old, Shelley visited Lord Byron by Lake Geneva in Switzerland.

2. Paul McCartney: Music That Inspires Music In 1965, Paul McCartney composed the entire melody for the hit acoustic song Yesterday in a dream.

3. Niels Bohr: The Structure of The Atom ,The father of quantum mechanics, Niels Bohr, often spoke of the inspirational dream that led to his discovery of the structure of the atom.

4. Elias Howe: The Eye of The Needle In 1845, Howe invented the sewing machine based on a famous dream that helped him understand the mechanical penetration of the needle. He was not the first to conceive the idea of a sewing machine, however Howe made significant refinements to the design and was awarded the first US patent for a sewing machine using a lockstitch design. According to family history records:

5. Albert Einstein: The Speed of Light Einstein is famous for his genius insights into the nature of the universe - but what about his dreams?As it happens, he came to the extraordinary scientific achievement - discovering the principle of relativity - after having a vivid dream.

6. Srinivasa Ramanujan: The Man Who Knew Infinity The mathematical genius made substantial contributions to analytical theory of numbers, elliptic functions, continued fractions, and infinite series, and proved more than 3,000 mathematical theorems in his lifetime. Ramanujan stated that the insight for his work came to him in his dreams on many occasions.

7. Robert Louis Stevenson: A Fine Bogey Tale In 1886, Stevenson dreamed up three key sequences from the infamous fantasy thriller novel The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.A sick man for most of his life, he wrote mainly to support his family. Until, that was, it came to the inception of Jekyll & Hyde. Stevenson said:

8. Otto Loewi: Nerve Impulse Breakthrough Otto Loewi was a German-born pharmacologist whose discovery of acetylcholine (ironically, a neurotransmitter which promotes dreaming) helped advance medical therapy. The discovery earned him a Nobel Prize 13 years later. However, he is almost as famous for the means by which he discovered it, as he is for the discovery itself.:

9. August Kekulé: The Ouroboros Benzene DreamA prominent German organic chemist, August Kekulé insightfully dreamed of the structure of the Benzene molecule which, unlike other known organic compounds, had a circular structure rather than a linear one.

10. Frederick Banting: Advances in Medicine After his mother passed away from diabetes, Frederick Banting was motivated to find a cure. Eventually he found the next best thing: a treatment using insulin injections which, though not a true cure, could at least significantly extend the lifespan of sufferers. The discovery won him a Nobel Prize in Medicine at just 32 years old.