British Chemist. Regarded by many as the founder of the modern chemical industry, when at the age of 18, in 1856, discovered the first aniline dye, mauveine, at a time when chemistry was still in a quite primitive state. He discovered a method of making a permanent purple dye, during an experiment to try to produce synthetic quinine. Although atomic theory was accepted, the major elements discovered, and techniques to analyze the proportions of the elements in many compounds were in place, it was still a difficult proposition to determine the arrangement of the elements in compounds. With his father and an older brother, Thomas, he opened a factory at Greenford, middx, adjoining the Grand Union Canal, to produce the aniline dye commercially and continued with his chemical experimention. Local lore has it that the color of the nearby Grand Union Canal changed from week to week depending on the activity of Perkin's dyeworks. In 1869, Perkin found a method to commercially produce alizarin, a brilliant red dye then produce from the madder plant, from anthracene, but the German chemical company BASF patented the same process one day before he did. After selling the greenford factory in 1874 because of German competition, he devoted himself to experimental chemistry, investigating the constitution of chemical molecules. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1866 and was president of the Chemical Society 1883-5 and of the Society of Chemical Industry 1884-5. He was knighted in 1906 on the fiftieth anniversary of his discovery. At the time of his death he was regarded as the founder of the modern chemical industry. It was said that he was "the first man to call into existance a completely new and mighty industry, founded on pure science." He was buried at Christchurch, Roxeth, in 1907 and Tom Bartlett, who attended the funeral, remarked on the mountain of flowers and tributes then paid to his genius by German science and German industry.