Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) was a British chemical company. It was, for much of its history, the largest manufacturer in Britain. It was formed by the merger of four leading British chemical companies in 1926. Its headquarters were at Millbank in London. ICI was a constituent of the FT 30 and later the FTSE 100 indices.
Alizarin is an organic compound with formula C
14H
8O
4 that has been used throughout history as a prominent red dye, principally for dyeing textile fabrics. Historically it was derived from the roots of plants of the madder genus. In 1869, it became the first natural dye to be produced synthetically.
AstraZeneca plc is a British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company with its headquarters at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus in Cambridge, England. It has a portfolio of products for major diseases in areas including oncology, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, infection, neuroscience, respiratory, and inflammation. It has been involved in developing the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.
Akzo Nobel N.V., stylized as AkzoNobel, is a Dutch multinational company which creates paints and performance coatings for both industry and consumers worldwide. Headquartered in Amsterdam, the company has activities in more than 150 countries. AkzoNobel is the world's third-largest paint manufacturer by revenue after Sherwin-Williams and PPG Industries.
Coomassie brilliant blue is the name of two similar triphenylmethane dyes that were developed for use in the textile industry but are now commonly used for staining proteins in analytical biochemistry. Coomassie brilliant blue G-250 differs from Coomassie brilliant blue R-250 by the addition of two methyl groups. The name "Coomassie" is a registered trademark of Imperial Chemical Industries.
Blackley is a suburban area of Manchester, England. Historically in Lancashire, it is approximately 4.5 miles (7.2 km) north of Manchester city centre, on the River Irk.
Zeneca was a British multinational pharmaceutical company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It was formed in June 1993 by the demerger of the pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals businesses of Imperial Chemical Industries into a separate company listed on the London Stock Exchange.
Sir Thomas Fulton Wilson McKillop, FRS, FRSE is a Scottish chemist, who was CEO of AstraZeneca PLC from 1999 until 2006 and chairman of the RBS Group from 2006 until 2008.
Steven Victor Ley is Professor of Organic Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, and is a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He was President of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2000–2002) and was made a CBE in January 2002, in the process. In 2011, he was included by The Times in the list of the "100 most important people in British science".
Francis Leslie Rose was a British chemist.
British Dyestuffs Corporation Ltd (BDC) was a British company formed in 1919 from the merger of British Dyes Ltd with Levinstein Ltd. The British Government was the company's largest shareholder, and had two directors on the board.
Turkey red is a dyeing methods that was widely used to give cotton a distringtive bright red colour in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was made using the root of the rubia (madder) plant, through a long and laborious process which originated in the historical Levant region, namely being developed in India and China. Turkey red was brought to Europe in the 1740s and in France was known as rouge d'Andrinople.
John Donald Rose FRS was a British industrial chemist, who worked for Imperial Chemical Industries from 1935 to 1972. His posts at ICI included director of research and chairman of the paints division. He was also Master of the Worshipful Company of Salters.
Alderley Park was a country estate at Nether Alderley, Cheshire, England, between Macclesfield and Knutsford. It was the residence of the Stanley family of Alderley from the 1500s. It became the headquarters of ICI Pharmaceuticals in the 1950s. It was purchased from AstraZeneca by Bruntwood in 2014. The site has an international reputation as a home for bio and life sciences.
The Clayton Aniline Company Ltd. was a British manufacturer of dyestuffs, founded in 1876 by Charles Dreyfus in Clayton, Manchester.
Sir James Baddiley FRS FRSE was a British biochemist.
Alfred Spinks, was a British chemist and biologist.
Dr Cecil John Turrell Cronshaw FRSE DSc was a British industrial chemist, Manager of the Manchester Ship Canal and Director of the chemical giant, ICI. He was involved in the evolution of modern industrial dyes.
Levinstein Ltd was an important Manchester based British dye-making company founded by Ivan Levinstein (1845-1916). In 1918 the firm became part of British Dyestuffs Corporation which in turn formed part of Imperial Chemical Industries in 1926. The firm had operations in Salford, Hulton House in Blackley, and during World War I a sequestered German-owned plant in Ellesmere Port. The firm made the successful Blackley blue or Coomassie brilliant blue, a Manchester Brown, a Manchester Yellow dye and during WWI chemicals for military purposes.
Ivan Levinstein (1845-1916) was a German-born British chemist who pioneered the manufacture of synthetic dyes and helped develop the British chemical industry in the late nineteenth century. He was born in Charlottenburg, Germany, the son of a Berlin Calico manufacturer, studied chemistry at the Gewerbeinstitut, which later became the Technical University of Berlin, before joining the family business. He obtained his first patent in Germany in 1863 for improvements in manufacturing coal tar dyes.
