Scientist of the Day - William Henry Perkin

Portrait of William Henry Perkin, holding a piece of cloth dyed mauve, oil on canvas, by Arthur Stockdale Cope, 1906, National Portrait Gallery, London (npg.org.uk)

William Henry Perkin, an English chemist, was born Mar. 12, 1838, in London. His father was a carpenter, but a successful one, and he saw that William got a good education. His father wanted him to become an architect, but William had discovered the world of acids and retorts and wanted to be a chemist, like Humphry Davy, whom he saw demonstrate at the Royal Institution. He entered the recently founded Royal College of Chemistry in London in 1853, which was run by a German chemist, August Hofmann, personally selected by Prince Albert.  Perkin eventually became Hofmann’s student assistant.

Hofmann was interested in finding a synthetic version of quinine, the only effective remedy against malaria, the disease that was the scourge of the British Empire. Natural quinine came from the bark of the cinchona tree, which would grow in only a few places, and so was scarce and expensive.  Since quinine was structurally similar to a compound made from naphtha, a byproduct of coal-tar, itself a byproduct of the coal-gas industry, Hofmann set Perkin to work with naphtha and other ingredients of coal-tar, hoping to synthesize quinine.

Perkin had no luck with naphtha, so he switched to another coal-tar derivative, aniline, and in March of 1856, working at home while school was not in session, Perkin synthesized a new substance, but it wasn't quinine. It was a thick black goo, whose most interesting property was that, when you washed it with alcohol, it turned bright purple, and the purple color persisted. Perkin called the new substance mauveine.

A dress made around 1862 of cloth dyed with mauveine from Perkin’s factory in Greenford, Science Museum, London (sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk)

Perkin carried out further chemical investigations in secret, with his brother and a friend, since this was not what he was supposed to be doing for Hofmann, and he discovered that silk dyed with mauveine not oniy accepted the purple color readily, but retained it though repeated washings.  Perkin sent a sample to a Scottish dye-works in Perth.  The only available natural purple dyes were Tyrian purple, made from a snail-like invertebrate, and cochineal, made from a tiny insect, and both were frightfully expensive.  So the man who received Perkin’s sample was quite excited and encouraging.  Perkin’s friend advised William to patent his discovery, and that summer he did so. With that patent, Perkin inadvertently founded the synthetic chemical dye industry.  He was 18 years old. 

The road from there was not easy, securing financing, setting up a plant in Greenford, persuading dyers to place orders, but eventually the new color mauve, as it came to be called, available only from Perkin's plant, took the fashion world by storm. Perkin discovered other aniline dyes, and so did dozens of other organic chemists. Coal-tar products found their way into medicines, skin-care products, food preservatives, and dozens of other uses. Industrial chemistry would never be the same. And it all started with Perkin and mauveine and spring break of 1856.

Perkin Medal for excellence in industrial chemistry, first awarded to William Henry Perkin in 1906, and annually ever since (Wikimedia commons)

One of the advantages of making the most important discovery of your life at age 18 is that you have a good chance of still being around when the 50th anniversary of your achievement comes up. Perkin was invited to New York City in 1906 to be feted by 400 captains of industry at a banquet at Delmonico's for founding synthetic industrial chemistry in 1856, and he was treated like a god. He was awarded the first Perkin Medal, given annually ever since by the Society of Chemical Industry in the U.S.  Perkin enjoyed himself thoroughly, and it came just in time, as he died a year later, on July 14, 1907. He was buried at Christchurch, Harrow, Middlesex, where there is a grave marker, but not one easily photographed. There is a blue plaque near the spot where his boyhood house used to be, and where he made his first bit of mauveine (last image).

Blue plaque honoring William Henry Perkin, Cable Street, London, near where once stood the house in which Perkin first synthesized mauveine in 1856 (Wikimedia commons)

The Science Museum in London has a mauve dress made in the 1860s and colored with a batch of dye from Perkin’s factory (second image). Who knows what color it was 160 years ago, but you can still get some idea of what a sensation it must have been.

William B. Ashworth, Jr., Consultant for the History of Science, Linda Hall Library and Associate Professor emeritus, Department of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City. Comments or corrections are welcome; please direct to ashworthw@umkc.edu.