Sir William Henry Perkin

Early years

William Henry Perkin was born in East End of London, the youngest of seven children. His father was a successful carpenter. His mother, Sarah, was of Scottish descent but moved to East London as a child. He was baptised in the parish church of St. Paul's on The Highway, which had been connected to such luminaries as James Cook, Jane Randolph Jefferson (mother of Thomas Jefferson) and John Wesley. He attended the City of London School where he was taught by Thomas Hall who fostered his scientific talent and encouraged him to pursue a chemical career.

Discovery of mauveine

In 1853, at the precocious age of 15, Perkin entered the Royal College of Chemistry in London (now part of Imperial College London), where he began his studies under the illustrious aniline could be partly transformed into a crude mixture that when extracted with alcohol gave an intense purple colour. Perkin, who had an interest in painting and photography, immediately became interested in the result, and carried out further trials with his friend Arthur Church and his brother Thomas. Since this was off the track of the quinine work he had been assigned, they carried out the experiments in a hut in Perkin's garden, in secret from Hofmann. A blue plaque marks the site of their home in Cable Street, by the junction with St David Lane (link to Google Earth placemark).  

They satisfied themselves that they might be able to scale up the discovery and commercialize it as a dye, which they called Tyrian purple, it came from the glandular mucus of certain molluscs. The process to produce it was variable and complicated, so Perkin and his brother understood that they were onto a possible substitute that could be made into a commercial success.

Perkin could not have chosen a better time or place for his discovery. England was the cradle of the Industrial Revolution, largely driven by advances in the production of textiles, the science of chemistry had advanced to the point that it could have a major impact on industrial processes and coal tar, the major source of his raw material was being produced in abundance as a waste product of the production of coal gas and coke.

Inventing the dye was one thing, raising the capital, manufacturing it in quantity cheaply, adapting it to cotton, getting acceptance from commercial dyers, and creating demand for it in the public was something else. Perkin was active in all of these areas. In a whirlwind of activity, he got his father to put up the capital, his brothers to partner in the creation of a factory, he invented a mordant for cotton, became a one man technical service operation, and publicized it in the marketplace. He was helped in the latter by the adoption of a similar colour in France by Napoleon's Empress Eugénie and Queen Victoria, and by the adoption of the fabric-hungry crinoline, or hooped-skirt. Everything seemed to "fall into place" through hard work and a little luck too. He became rich.

The true significance of Perkin's work was in showing that science and common everyday business and consumerism could co-exist. Even at the age of 18, he demonstrated chemistry could be extremely lucrative, for many scientists at that time were concerned solely with academia.

After Perkin's discovery, innumerable new aniline dyes appeared (some discovered by Perkin himself), and the factories required to produce them were constructed all across Europe, launching what amounted to an international trade war in fabrics and dyes.

Later years

William Perkin continued active research in organic chemistry for the rest of his life. He discovered and marketed other synthetic dyes including Britannia Violet and Perkin's Green. He later found syntheses for BASF patented the same process one day before he did. Over the next few years, Perkin found his research and development efforts increasingly eclipsed by the German chemical industry, and in 1874, he sold his factory and retired from business, already a very wealthy man.

Perkin received many honors in his lifetime. In 1879, he received the Royal Society's Royal Medal, and then, in 1889, its mauveine. Today it is widely acknowledged as the highest honour in American industrial chemistry and has been awarded annually by the American section of the Society of Chemical Industry to many inspiring and gifted chemists.

He died in 1907 of pneumonia and appendicitis.

References

• Garfield, Simon Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color that Changed the World, ISBN 0-393-02005-3 (2000).

  Garfield relates how William Perkin's accidental discovery of the color mauve – and a method to mass-produce it – created new interest in the industrial applications of chemistry research.

• Travis, Anthony S. "Perkin, Sir William Henry (1838-1907)" in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, edited C. Mathew et al. Oxford University Press: 2004. ISBN 0-19-861411-X.
• Holme I (2006). "Sir William Henry Perkin: a review of his life, work and legacy". Coloration Technology 122 (5): 235-251. doi:10.1111/j.1478-4408.2006.00041.x.
• Brightman R. (1956). "Perkin and the Dyestuffs Industry in Britain". Nature 177 (4514): 805-856. doi:10.1038/177815a0.