Mauveine: the first synthetic aniline dye from coal tar
A synthetic aniline dye, a bright purple, obtained by accident in a London home laboratory. The starting material was a waste product of the gas industry, coal tar.
The eighteen-year-old English student William Henry Perkin in 1856 was trying to prepare quinine by oxidising an aniline base and obtained a black precipitate from which alcohol drew a bright purple that dyed silk fast. The reasoning was hopeless: it added up formulas by composition, since in 1856 nobody yet argued about the structure of molecules, so what succeeded was not the plan but the ability to notice and repeat the result. Perkin filed a patent in August 1856 and opened his own works.
Out of this grew an industry in which the laboratory stands next to the workshop, and with it hundreds of new substances, among them those that selectively stain tissues and microbes under the microscope.
Why this date
Exact to the year. The experiment was made during the Easter vacation of 1856 in the home laboratory of the eighteen-year-old Perkin, a student at the Royal College of Chemistry (Science History Institute). The patent was applied for on 26 August 1856 and granted on 20 February 1857 (Resonance 2010). The factory at Greenford Green near London opened in 1857. The axis value is 1856, from the experiment and the application; the substance was first called Tyrian purple and aniline purple, and the name mauveine settled later.
What grew out of it
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Koch isolates the cholera pathogen; germ theory displaces miasma
influenced · Confidence: high
The dyes of the coal tar industry made bacteria visible: preparations were stained with aniline dyes, and it was with their help that the agents of tuberculosis, cholera and anthrax were identified.
Dispute: This connection is asserted most directly by a reference work rather than by a historian of science; the Dictionary of Scientific Biography confirms only the nearer link, that Koch stained his preparations with aniline dyes following Weigert's method. Staining was also not the only condition: the cholera vibrio was identified together with the method of pure cultures on solid media.
Link sources
- «William Henry Perkin», Encyclopedia of World Biography Verified 20 Sep 2026
The dyes also became vital to medical research in many ways. For instance, they were used to stain previously invisible microbes and bacteria, allowing researchers to identify such bacilli as tuberculosis, cholera, and anthrax.
- Dolman C. E. «Koch, Heinrich Hermann Robert», Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography (via Encyclopedia.com) (1973) Verified 20 Sep 2026
This described techniques for dry-fixing thin films of bacterial culture on glass slides, for staining them with aniline dyes (according to information received from Carl Weigert in Breslau)
- Dolman C. E. «Koch, Heinrich Hermann Robert», Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography (via Encyclopedia.com) (1973) Verified 20 Sep 2026
Paul Ehrlich, who later recalled that evening as his 'greatest scientific event,' developed overnight an improved method of staining tubercle bacilli, which Koch adopted.
- Edelstein S. «Perkin, William Henry», Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography (via Encyclopedia.com) Verified 20 Sep 2026
Perkin's discovery gave impetus to a new coal-tar dyestuffs industry.
"Verified" means that on that day the quotation was found at the address given, word for word. No date means we have not been able to open the source yet, not that the quotation is wrong.
- «William Henry Perkin», Encyclopedia of World Biography Verified 20 Sep 2026
Links under review
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Chromatin and mitosis: longitudinal splitting of the nuclear threads in cell division
influenced · Confidence: low
The last link, from Perkin's mauveine to the cytologists' dyes, was built by the editor: the sources confirm the synthetic dye industry and the staining of chromosomes with aniline dyes separately; no historian of dyes joining them is cited (to look for: Bracegirdle, A History of Microtechnique; Clark and Kasten, History of Staining).
Chromatin is named after the dye: Flemming saw it and named it because the nuclear threads bound an aniline dye, that is, a substance of the very coal-tar industry that grew out of Perkin's mauveine.
Dispute: The weak point of the link is that neither Yanagida, nor Lamm and co-authors, nor Bechtel and Bollhagen trace Flemming's aniline dyes back to Perkin's industry: they say only that the dye was an aniline one. The industrial origin of such dyes is supported by a separate source that says nothing about Flemming, so the last step is supplied by us. Besides, carmine and haematoxylin, also used by cytologists, are not aniline dyes, and part of Flemming's work was not done with them; hence the low confidence. The core already carries a link of the same construction, mauveine to Koch 1883.
Link sources
- Mitsuhiro Yanagida, The Role of Model Organisms in the History of Mitosis Research, Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology 6 (9), a015768 (2014) Verified 20 Sep 2026
For visualization of chromosomes, Flemming used aniline dyes, which bind to chromosomes.
- Ehud Lamm, Oren Harman, Sophie Juliane Veigl, Before Watson and Crick in 1953 Came Friedrich Miescher in 1869, Genetics 215 (2), 291-296 (2020) Verified 20 Sep 2026
By staining cells with aniline, the German cytologist Walther Flemming consequently identified a structure in the nucleus that absorbed basophilic dyes a full decade after Miescher’s discovery, coining it chromatin in 1882 (Flemming 1882).
- William Bechtel, Andrew Bollhagen, Philosophy of Cell Biology, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2021) Verified 20 Sep 2026
As noted in Section 2, Flemming named the nuclear structures he observed chromatin since they bound the aniline dye he was using.
- Robert Olby, Flemming, Walther, Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1972) Verified 20 Sep 2026
he improved Flesch’s fixative in 1882 by addition of acetic acid to give Flemming’s fluid; he introduced Flemming’s stain (safranine-gentian violet–Orange G) in 1891.
- Edelstein S. «Perkin, William Henry», Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography (via Encyclopedia.com) (2008) Verified 20 Sep 2026
Perkin’s discovery gave impetus to a new coal-tar dyestuffs industry.
"Verified" means that on that day the quotation was found at the address given, word for word. No date means we have not been able to open the source yet, not that the quotation is wrong.
- Mitsuhiro Yanagida, The Role of Model Organisms in the History of Mitosis Research, Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology 6 (9), a015768 (2014) Verified 20 Sep 2026
Node sources
- Cova T. F. G. G., Pais A. A. C. C., Seixas de Melo J. S. «Reconstructing the historical synthesis of mauveine from Perkin and Caro: procedure and details», Scientific Reports 7, 6806 (2017) Verified 20 Sep 2026
It was the first commercially successful synthetic organic dye and was obtained accidentally by William H. Perkin in 1856 while attempting to synthesize the antimalarial drug quinine.
- Cova T. F. G. G., Pais A. A. C. C., Seixas de Melo J. S. «Reconstructing the historical synthesis of mauveine from Perkin and Caro: procedure and details», Scientific Reports 7, 6806 (2017) Verified 20 Sep 2026
Equivalent proportions of sulphate of aniline and bichromate of potassium are to be dissolved in separate portions of hot water, and, when dissolved, they are to be mixed and stirred, which causes a black precipitate to form.
- «Sir William Henry Perkin: The Man and his Mauve», Resonance (Indian Academy of Sciences), 15 (9), 779-793 (2010) Verified 25 Sep 2026
He applied for a patent for it on 26th August 1856, with the intention of manufacturing it. The patent was granted on 20th February 1857.
- «Sir William Henry Perkin: The Man and his Mauve», Resonance (Indian Academy of Sciences), 15 (9), 779-793 (2010) Verified 25 Sep 2026
Therefore it is quite logical to assume that one can combine two molecules of a compound with molecular formula C₁₀H₁₃N to get C₂₀H₂₆N₂, at the same time adding two oxygen atoms and removing two hydrogen atoms.
- Science History Institute, «William Henry Perkin» Verified 20 Sep 2026
In 1856, during Easter vacation from London's Royal College of Chemistry
- Science History Institute, «William Henry Perkin» Verified 20 Sep 2026
Against Hofmann's recommendation and with the financial support of his father, a construction contractor, Perkin commercialized his serendipitous discovery and developed the processes for the production and use of the new dye. In 1857 he opened his factory at Greenford Green, not far from London.
- «William Henry Perkin», Encyclopedia of World Biography Verified 20 Sep 2026
Perkin's discovery gave impetus to a new coal-tar dyestuffs industry.
"Verified" means that on that day the quotation was found at the address given, word for word. No date means we have not been able to open the source yet, not that the quotation is wrong.