August Wilhelm von Hofmann (1818-1892)

German chemist, born in Giessen, where he studied under Justus von Liebig. He was the first director of the Royal College of Chemistry in London (1845-1865), where William Perkin was his student, and later professor in Berlin, where he founded the German Chemical Society (1867).

He studied aniline, amines and coal-tar dyes in depth. His name is linked to the Hofmann elimination of quaternary ammonium salts and to the Hofmann rearrangement of amides (1881).