NATS 1870 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: William Henry Perkin, Coal Tar, Phthalocyanine
21 Jan 2019
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Document Summary
The history of chemistry, and the development of chemistry as an applied science was driven by a quest for colour. William henry perkin was a british chemistry student who tried to develop a cure for malaria. He wanted to develop a synthetic quinire(?) using coal tar and its derivatives, using products from the gas lighting industry. Instead, he accidentally made a black gunk, which he found was a great purple dye called mauvine when mixed with alcohol. This became super important to the fashion industry when perkin started mass production, accidentally starting the synthetic chemical industry. Synthetic chemical industry involves dyes, explosives, plastics, medicine, and fertiliser. The next step for the synthetic chemical industry was more scientific; people started to attempt to isolate and recreate natural molecules in order to obtain their colours. The first of these successful was the dye called madder red, which was isolated from the root molecule of the madder plant.
