Hello, I am you Grandfather William Perkin. I know you must be wondering who I am and why you are receiving this letter. I am your mother's Father. I gave her this letter to give to you in case I died before you were born. I wanted to let you know who I was as a person and what my life was like. To start off I was born on March 12, 1838 in England. I was a very curious kid. I liked to paint and mess around with different things. I once tried to build an engine. My father George, who was a builder and contractor, hoped I would become an architect when I got older, but that all changed when a friend of mine introduced me to the wonderful world of chemistry. He showed me chemical experiments that crystallized substances into definite forms. When I learned about the wonders of chemistry I was attending school at the City of London School. Here I was able to take different lessons on different chemistry topics. Thomas Hall was my teacher and he saw my passion for chemistry. When I was fifteen he told me I was ready to attend the Royal College of Science. This is where I met a German chemist named August Wilhelm von Hofmann and got to be his assistant in class and labs at the age of seventeen. I think many of the students in the class were amazed to see such a young person helping a person who has already gone through school. I felt honored to be this chemist assistant. I built my own laboratory at home so I could put to work all the ideas and experiments he wanted to do in search for new discoveries.
             One time in the lab Mr. Hofmann thought that coal tar could be converted into alkaloids which were synthesized from quinine, a drug that was used in this time to cure the disease malaria. I found this idea very interesting and a challenge, so on my Easter break from school in 1856, I began to try different
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