William Henry Perkin Jr.

William Henry Perkin junior (born June 17, 1860 in Sudbury , † September 17, 1929 in Oxford ) was a British chemist ( organic chemistry ).

Life

He was the son of William Henry Perkin , in whose private laboratory he became familiar with chemistry, and the brother of Arthur George Perkin . From 1877 he studied at the Royal College of Chemistry and from 1880 at the University of Würzburg , where he received his doctorate under Johannes Wislicenus . He then worked as an assistant at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich under Adolf von Baeyer , where he qualified as a professor and became a private lecturer in 1883. In 1886 he went back to England, was briefly at Owens College in Manchester (later Victoria University), became a professor at Heriot-Watt College in Edinburgh in 1887 and, in 1892, succeeded Carl Schorlemmer as professor of organic chemistry at Owens College. Perkin built a school of organic chemistry there with an international reputation. He built the laboratory based on the model of von Baeyer's in Munich. It still stands right next to the laboratory that was founded in 1895 by the chemist and industrialist Edward Schunck (Schunck's private laboratory, which was removed stone by stone and reassembled at the university). In 1913 he became a professor at Oxford to succeed William Odling . One reason for moving to Oxford was a planned change in Manchester University's policy of working with industry, which Perkin valued and which would have resulted in a loss of income for Perkin. In Oxford he was first in the obsolete laboratory of Odling. But new ones soon emerged, and Perkin helped introduce students to current research for their degrees. In Oxford, however, he could not fully build on the successes of his school of organic chemistry in Manchester, as there was fierce competition in Oxford, especially with physical chemistry (including Frederick Soddy ).

Schunck Building, University of Manchester, Perkin Laboratory to the right

During the First World War he dealt with the industrial synthesis of dyes after the German suppliers failed. He was on the advisory board of British Dyes Limited and from 1924 in its management, but gave up in 1925 to devote himself to research. He also dealt with the chemistry of natural substances ( camphor , terpenes , alkaloids , dyes of Brazil wood ).

He is known for the synthesis of ( alicyclic ) carbon rings with 3, 4, 5 or 7 carbon atoms. The existence of such rings with fewer than 6 carbon atoms contradicted the doctrine of the time, which is why he left the laboratory of Adolf von Baeyer in Munich, where he carried out this research from 1883 to 1885 - but he remained lifelong friends with Baeyer. In this context, a variant of the malonic ester synthesis is named after him, in which a ring of 5 carbon atoms is formed in the molecule.

He wrote textbooks with his brother-in-law Frederic Stanley Kipping , e.g. B. Organic Chemistry (1899).

His students included the Nobel Prize winners Walter Norman Haworth and Robert Robinson , as well as Chaim Weizmann , Frank Pyman and Eduard Hope . In Manchester he was friends with Chaim Weizmann, but got into an argument with him over the fermentation of starch to isoamyl alcohol , which led to Weizmann's dismissal in Manchester. The substance was economically relevant as a starting point for synthetic rubber. During the First World War, he gave a commemorative lecture for Adolf von Baeyer in 1917.

The chemistry building of the Heriot-Watt University is named after him. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society , a member of the Académie des Sciences and the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala , received the Davy Medal in 1904 and the Royal Medal in 1925 . From 1913 to 1916 he was President of the Chemical Society and received its Longstaff Medal in 1916. In 1910 he received an honorary doctorate in Edinburgh. In 1906 he was elected a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and in 1911 of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . In 1919 he was accepted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

In 1888 he married Mina Holland. The marriage remained childless. In addition to Frederick Kipping, Arthur Lapworth was his brother-in-law. They married sisters, which was the subject of a book by Eugene G. Rochow .

literature

• Winfried Pötsch u. a .: Lexicon of important chemists , Harri Deutsch 1989

Web links

• Short biography at MyRSC

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 187.
2. ↑ Rochow, Eduard Krahé: The Holland Sisters: Their influence on the success of Their husbands Perkin, Kipping and Lapworth, Springer 2001