Friedrich Engelhorn

Friedrich Engelhorn (1821 to 1902) was a German industrialist from Mannheim who founded BASF, the Badische Anilin- und Soda-Fabrik, in 1865. He began as a goldsmith, opened his own shop after his years as a travelling journeyman, and turned to gas lighting when the revolutions of 1848 hurt his trade, setting up a private gasworks and later managing the public gasworks of Mannheim. Seeing that coal tar left over from gas manufacture could feed the new synthetic dye industry that followed William Henry Perkin's discovery of the first aniline dye, he founded a small dyestuff factory and then, with partners, the company that became BASF, buying land at Ludwigshafen when Mannheim refused to sell. He served as its commercial director while its chemists, working with outside professors, patented synthetic alizarin in 1869. After disputes with his partners he moved to the supervisory board in 1884 and left the company a year later, and he also bought a medical firm in Mannheim. BASF later named its commercial high-rise in Ludwigshafen after him.