Henry Edward Schunck, known as Edward von Schunck, was a British chemist who did much work with dyes.
19 Facts About Edward Schunck
1.
2.
Henry Edward Schunck was born in Manchester, the son of Martin Schunck, a German merchant.
3.
The young Schunck was sent to further his chemical studies to Berlin where he studied under Heinrich Rose who discovered niobium, diligently analysed minerals and other inorganic substances and studied the chemistry of titanium, phosphorus, arsenic, antimony, sulphur, selenium and tellurium.
4.
Edward Schunck studied at Berlin under Heinrich Gustav Magnus who published over 80 papers on many diverse topics in chemistry and physics.
5.
Edward Schunck published his results in two papers in 1841 and 1848.
6.
Liebig encouraged Edward Schunck to reinvestigate the subject using dye-producing lichens that grow on the basalt rocks of the Vogelsberg in Upper Hessia.
7.
Edward Schunck started his extensive investigations into the colouring materials in madder in 1846.
8.
When purified by Edward Schunck using sublimation and crystallisation, he obtained a result which suggested C14H8O4, but taking into account the analyses of metal derivatives as well, he chose C14H10O4 as the best result.
9.
Edward Schunck found that oxidation of alizarin with nitric acid gave alizaric acid which on heating gave pyroalizaric acid.
10.
Edward Schunck was vindicated when Graebe and Liebermann distilled alizarin with zinc dust to give anthracene, a C14 hydrocarbon, and subsequently synthesised alizarin from anthraquinone.
11.
Edward Schunck showed that alizarin was not the major colour precursor component of fresh madder root, but it was a yellow, bitter, water-soluble component, which he called rubian.
12.
In 1855, Edward Schunck turned his attention to the subject of indigo, preferring the name indigo-blue to the alternative name, Indigotine.
13.
Edward Schunck grew woad from "good French woad seed", extracted the dye precursor with cold ethanol and after further processing obtained a brown syrup which he called "indican".
14.
The presence of indigo in urine has long been the subject of much curiosity and Edward Schunck tried in 1857 to show that "indican" was the origin.
15.
Edward Schunck thought this variation might be due to different kinds of diet, but after many experiments, found only one which worked: "I took on the next night, before going to bed, a mixture of treacle and arrowroot boiled with water in as large a quantity as the stomach could bear, and the effect was that the urine of the following night gave a large quantity of indigo-blue".
16.
Edward Schunck married Judith Howard Brooke in 1851 and was survived by four of his children.
17.
Edward Schunck built a private laboratory in the grounds of his home, "The Oaklands", in Kersal, which together with his library and collection of specimens were bequeathed to the Victoria University of Manchester.
18.
The room in which Edward Schunck kept his library on the first floor is remarkably ornate.
19.
Edward Schunck's books are now in the John Rylands University Library and his specimens in the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester.