Product Description

In his bestselling and widely praised Mauve, Simon Garfield tells the story of the forgotten scientific pioneer William Perkin, a man whose father didn't want him to become a chemist, and whose chemistry professor didn't want him to wreck his career in pursuit of a colour. By the age of 18, however, Perkin had made a discovery that would make him the richest chemist in Britain. 'Thoroughly researched and beautifully written, the book is more than just a biography of Perkin. Garfield weaves the past with the present as he tells us just how Perkin's discovery changed the world; New Scientist

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #120470 in Books
• Published on: 2001-09-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Mauve? Not the butchest of colours perhaps; you might be forgiven for wondering whether, if a Longitude-style book had to be written about hues, Red, Blue or Yellow might not be the place to start instead. But Garfield has chosen his colour well: mauve and its 19th-century inventor William Perkin constitute a fascinating story. This book convincingly argues that Perkin's invention of this chemical dye became a major turning point in the history of Western science and industry. Purple had always been a royal colour, in part because it was so difficult (and hence expensive) to achieve a good shade out of the animal, mineral or plant raw materials from which all dyes were derived; it took 17,000 dried and crushed cactus insects to make one ounce of cochineal. Perkin found a cheap way to produce a synthetic purple; he made a fortune and prompted a craze for the colour in the fashion industry of his day. But more than this, Garfield argues, he kick-started chemistry from being a gentleman-amateur pastime into becoming the major world industry it is today. Mauve (the Victorians pronounced it "morv", apparently) really did change the world. Just as Perkins's colour was something wholly new, Garfield's Mauve represents a new sort of book, a more varied synthesis than the run-of-the-mill animal, mineral or plant books. In part it is a biography, in part a social and cultural history, and partly it is a meditation on the roles chemistry (and colour) play in our world. It even manages to function as a primer in inorganic chemistry. Garfield achieves this last without being either baffling or condescending; he breaks us in gently to the subject of, for instance, benzene rings by relating Friedrich Kekule's 1858 dream, dozing in front of the fire, "gambolling atoms in snake-like motion, one of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail: his benzene structure consisted of six carbon atoms, each attached to a hydrogen atom C6H6". The model for this integration of chemistry into everyday life is taken from the period itself--at one point we're told that "William Perkins Jnr wrote again, enquiring about the atomic structures of various synthetic perfumes and wishing his father a happy birthday". Presumably in that order. Garfield's book draws you into this world of dyes and dyers; the reader emerges a little mauver than when they started. --Adam Roberts

Review
'This remarkable book about how the colour was discovered opened my eyes... Garfield's study is far more than a social history of fashion. It is a book about science which also happens to be a miniature work of art.' Daily Telegraph

About the Author
Simon Garfield was born in 1960. He is the author of Expensive Habits: The Dark Side of the Industry (1986). The End of Innocence: Britain in the Time of AIDS (1994). are The Nation's Favourite: The True Adventures of Radio 1 (1998).

Customer Reviews

A fascinating look at science and fashion
Mauve is almost impossible to categorize. It is part biography, part science history, part medical history and part fashion book. It tells the story of Sir William Perkin, the man who discovered the first artificial dye - mauve - in the 1850s. The colour was a sensation at the time, but was even more remarkable for what it led to - particularly the advances in medicine such as the study of chromosomes and the subsequent conquest of disease such as tuberculosis. Mauve was discovered by Perkin when he was 18 by mistake, when he was looking for a way of making quinine. The book ends with the eventual discovery of articial quinine many years later. I especially liked the way Simon Garfield interweaves the past and present story. It's a remarkable and I think untold tale of how one colour achieved so much, and it will make you think about all colours in a totally different light.

Fascinating look at the history of organic chemistry
If, like me, you always thought chemistry was boring, think again! This book manages to make the subject of manufactured dyes interesting: describing the competition to invent new dyes, and the developments following on from Perkin's discovery in vivid prose.
"Mauve" follows on from the ground best trod by Sobel with "Longitude", and may not be as gripping, but "Mauve" is certainly one of the better popular science books I've read.

An amazing story of Mauve's impact on 20th Century Britain
I found "Mauve" absolutely fascinating, not least for the remarkable chain of events that followed Sir William Henry Perkin's work on aniline dyes. Having been absorbed by this excellent book, I found it rather sad that even now, with so many 20th Century developments arising from Sir William's discoveries, such an unsung hero should still be relatively anonymous and even his final resting place cannot be found.

By a rather nice coincidence, though not related to Sir William, my father, Philip Perkin, worked in colour chemistry and industrial pigment production for over forty years in the North of England and would often return home with clothes spattered with every hue imaginable, just like his namesake !!

Mauve is a must-read for those intrigued to know how an apparently innocuous laboratory development led to the establishment of today's global chemical industry and changed our world, in so many ways, forever.