A forgotten anniversary?
Has the significance of William Henry Perkin's synthesis of the purple dye mauveine begun to fade?
The young William Henry Perkin (1838-1907), whose interests included mechanics, photography, art and chemistry, was educated at the City of London School. From 1853 he was a student, and then a research assistant, at the Royal College of Chemistry in London.2 Head of the college at that time was the German chemist August Wilhelm Hofmann, renowned for his research into the aromatic amine, aniline (phenylamine), and the 'ammonia type' formula for amines, which was used to describe the constituents of chemical compounds in the days before structural theories became available.
Like many chemists of this time, Hofmann was investigating ways of transforming coal tar into useful products, but with no success. Perkin, working in his home laboratory during Easter of 1856, was trying to synthesise quinine via condensation of two molecules of allyltoluidine. When that failed, he wisely decided to repeat the experiment with the simplest aromatic amine, aniline. Trituration of the dark mass, obtained via oxidation of the aniline, with alcohol, afforded a purple solution that dyed a piece of silk a brilliant purple.3
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