Ether genius Michael Hayes

I dreamt that I was reading what looked, from the appearance of the paper, to be a mass-market paperback printed in the 1980s or thereabouts. I read a reference to "ether genius Michael Hayes." I understood that this brief descriptor was intended to help the reader mentally categorize the person referred to, as one might write "ant expert Edward O. Wilson" or "jazz trumpeter Miles Davis." It also somehow reminded me of a crossword clue, the kind meant to elicit a surname with a prompt like "medical pioneer Sir William."

There are lots of people called Michael Hayes, none of which is of any obvious relevance, and I have no real idea of what an "ether genius" might be. Diethyl ether? Luminiferous ether? Quintessence? The Thirty Aethyrs? The Book of Ether?

Haze "opaqueness of atmosphere" contrasts with aether "pure, bright upper air."

The name Hayes appeared in a dream I had when I was 11 or 12 years old, in which I heard this rhyme:

I have shorn many sheep in my lifetime

I have shorn many sheep in my days

I have shorn many sheep that are pretty to me

But none is as pretty as Hayes

All in all, the meaning of this dream is quite hazy. It would take an ether genius to clear it up.