478 CHEMICAL DISCOVERY AND INVENTION 



WILLIAM HENRY PERKIN was born in London, 12th March, 1838, 

 the youngest son of G. F. Perkin, a builder and contractor, who 

 died in 1865. 



After a few years at the City of London School, where he received 

 his first notions of chemistry from the late Thomas Hall, one of the 

 masters, he was allowed, at the early age of fifteen, to enter the 

 Royal College of Chemistry as a student under Hofmann in the year 

 1853. At the end of his second year, so rapid was his progress, he 

 was allowed to begin research, and the first subject attempted was 

 the isolation from coal-tar and nitration of anthacene (then known 

 as paranaphthalene). 



Undaunted by want of success, for reasons which can now be 

 appreciated, the boy was led to undertake other work in which better 

 results were secured, and he was made a member of the teaching 

 staff. In 1856, in the pursuit of an attempt to produce quinine 

 synthetically he submitted to oxidation a specimen of commercial 

 aniline, which as then manufactured consisted of aniline mixed with 

 variable proportions of the toluidines. The result was a dark 

 coloured precipitate from which, after further experiments, the 

 famous dye, " Aniline Purple," or " Tyrian Purple," or, as it was 

 called in France, " Mauve " was manufactured. This discovery 

 and the extensive use of the purple, especially in France, was the 

 starting-point of numerous investigations, out of which ultimately 

 grew the great coal-tar colour industry. 



Later, in 1868, Perkin resumed the study of anthracene, and 

 introduced a process for the production from it of alizarin. Not- 

 withstanding the invention of the sulphuric acid process by Caro, 

 Graebe, and Liebermann at the same time, it was stated by Perkin 

 himself (Hofmann Memorial Lecture, 1896) that up to the end of 

 1870 the Greenford Green Works (that is Perkin's) were the only 

 works producing artificial alizarin. 



From the first Perkin's heart was devoted to research for science's 

 sake, and all through the period when he was occupied as a manu- 

 facturer of d}^e- stuffs he continued to pursue investigation in other 

 directions without reference to industrial questions. His synthesis 

 of coumarin in 1868, and later of cinnamic acid were among the 

 results of a general method introduced by him and usually referred 

 to as Perkin's reaction. 



In 1874 Perkin retired from business as a manufacturer, and 

 devoted himself wholly to scientific research. He built a new house 

 at Sudbury on land adjoining that on which stood the house in 

 which he had lived up to that time, and which was thereafter con- 

 verted into a laboratory. Here many years were devoted to the 

 work on Magnetic Rotation. 



Perkin was elected into the Royai Society in 1866. He was 



