Distinguished guests from all over the UK descended on London to honour the 150th anniversary of William Perkin's discovery of the first synthetic dye, mauveine. The celebrations were jointly ...

Other early CS and RCC members include William Crookes, later to discover thallium, and William Perkin who at age 18 discovered the dye mauveine in 1856. He made his fortune with it and, some say, ...

Red dye No. 3 has a long history in food products, but the additive was recently banned in the U.S. Learn the origins and uses of this controversial dye.

But in 1856, William Henry Perkins, an 18-year-old chemist stumbled across the first synthetic dye, a purplish color called Mauveine, which was derived from coal tar.

Mauveine is known as one of the earliest lab-­made synthetic dyes in history and helped pave a path for the synthetic dye industry as a whole.

1. Perkin famously (and serendipitously) discovered the purple dye mauveine at age 18. 2. Also known as the Faraday effect, magnetic rotary polarization occurs when a magnetic field alters the ...

The dye that seeped from simmered chips of logwood, brought from far Belize by buccaneers, turned wool a marvelous range of pinks, reds, blues, and purples, depending on how the material was prepared.