In 1906 at a meeting of the Royal Institution the members of the SDC who attended were struck by the deep feeling with which the chairman, Sir William Henry Perkin, spoke when he received from the German Chemical Society the medal struck in memory of the person he called “my old master” which was the Hoffman Medal.

The Council of the SDC decided that no more fitting way could be thought of to associate the name of Sir William Henry Perkin with the objects of the Society than to found a “Perkin Medal” …