Google Doodle: Sir William Henry Perkin remembered on 180th birth anniversary

The chemist is being celebrated on what would have been his 180th birthday in the Google Doodle.

The Doodle depicts Perkin holding up the aniline dye with a crowd of people in front of him dressed in purple.

Sir William Perkin was born on March 12, 1838, and was the youngest of seven children and the son of George Perkin – a successful carpenter.

Perkin attended the City of London School and in 1853 aged 15 he began working with German chemist August Wilhelm von Hofmann at the Royal College of Chemistry (now Imperial College London).

It was here, while carrying out experiments with quinine, a chemical first discovered in the bark of certain tress, Perkin accidentally discovered a way of creating a dye which could be used to colour fabrics. 

The pair had been experimenting over how it could be used in the treatment of malaria. 

In 1856 while carrying out a further experiments in his makeshift laboratory at his home in Cable Street, London, Perkin discovered that aniline, an inexpensive coal tar waste product, could be used to produce a substance with a deep purple colour when combined with alcohol.

Perkin originally named the dye Tyrian Purple, but it later become known a mauve.

The discovery was significant as up until then fabrics had to be coloured with expensive natural substances, which could not be used in large quantities. 

The chemist had made the discovery in the midst of the Industrial Revolution and coal tar, the main source of his raw material, was being produced in large quantities as a waste product.

He patented the dye and opened a dyeworks at Greenford.

The colour purple was a mark of aristocracy and its long-time association with royalty, and so Perkin managed to garner commercial success with the discovery of the rich purple colour.

It was adopted by Queen Victoria and by by Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III, in France.

Perkin persuaded his father to put up the capital to support his enterprise and his brothers to partner with him to build a factory. 

He died in 1907, after suffering from pneumonia and is buried in Harrow, London.

All of his three sons also went on to become chemists, following in their father’s famous footsteps.