Editing William Henry Perkin (section)

== Later years ==
[[File:WilliamPerkinBluePlaque.png|thumb|Blue plaque in [[Cable Street]]]]
[[File:Section of Coal Tar Colour Works at Greenford. 19th C Wellcome M0014186.jpg|thumb|Section of Coal Tar Colour Works at Greenford]]
William Perkin continued active research in [[organic chemistry]] for the rest of his life: he discovered and marketed other [[synthetic dyes]], including ''Britannia Violet'' and ''Perkin's Green''; he discovered ways to make [[coumarin]], one of the first synthetic raw materials of [[perfume]], and [[cinnamic acid]]. (The reaction used to make the last became known as the [[Perkin reaction]].)<ref name="chemistry.msu.edu"/> Local lore has it that the colour of the nearby [[Grand Union Canal]] changed from week to week depending on the activity at Perkin's [[Greenford]] dyeworks.

In 1869, Perkin found a method for the commercial production from [[anthracene]] of the brilliant red dye [[alizarin]], which had been isolated and identified from [[Rubia|madder]] root some forty years earlier in 1826 by the French chemist [[Pierre Robiquet]], simultaneously with [[Purpurin (dye)|purpurin]], another red dye of lesser industrial interest, but the German chemical company [[BASF]] patented the same process one day before he did.<ref name="Chisholm 1911, p. 173"/>

During the next decade, the new German Empire was rapidly eclipsing Britain as the centre of Europe's chemical industry. By the 1890s, Germany had a near-[[monopoly]] on the business and Perkin was compelled to sell off his holdings and retire.