Portal:Clothing/Selected biography/5

Sir William Henry Perkin FRS (March 12, 1838 – July 14, 1907) was an English chemist best known for his discovery, at the age of 18, of the first aniline dye, mauveine. Perkin was born and brought up in the East End of London. At the age of 15, he entered London's Royal College of Chemistry, studying under August Wilhelm von Hofmann. He lived on Cable Street in East London, where he would often perform experiments. It was here that he discovered that aniline could be partly transformed into a crude mixture that when extracted with alcohol gave an intense purple colour. This Perkin and von Hofmann commercialized as mauveine. Perkin's discovery and sales resulted in a trade war, as competitors released variations of his initial dye. In 1879, Perkin received the Royal Society's Royal Medal, followed by the Society's Davy Medal in 1889. He was knighted in 1906, the same year he received the first Perkin Medal, established to commemorate the fifty years since his discovery. He died the following year of pneumonia and appendicitis.