Levinstein, Ivan

Ivan Levinstein, Observations and Suggestions on the Present Position of the British Chemical Industries, with Special Reference to Coal-Tar Derivatives, J. Soc. Chem. Ind. 5, 351-359 and 414 (1886). 

Apart from Hofmann and Caro, several German chemists and colorists who had worked in the English aniline dye industry returned to their homeland from the mid-1860s. Some, however, did not. Among the latter was Ivan Levinstein (Figure 10), who emigrated from Berlin to Salford, near Manchester, in 1864, and set up in business to manufacture aniline, its salts, and aniline red and derivatives. Soon he moved to Blackley, Manchester, to found what in 1926 would become a major facility of Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI). 

Ivan Levinstein, "Observations and suggestions on the present position of the British chemical industry, with special reference to coal-tar derivatives," Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry, 5 (1886), 351-359. 

With regard to river pollution, the chemical industry insisted that the domestic sewage problem should be dealt with first. Domestic sewage was emphasised as a greater sanitary evil and threat to the health of towns, whilst sanitary authorities, and not manufacturers, were cast in the role of chief sinners on the question of river quality. Ivan Levinstein even maintained that ... 

Two further organisations worked in concert with the Manchester Section of the Society of Chemical Industry to press for the interests of the trade during this period the Chemical Manufacturers and Allied Trades Association and the Chemical Committee of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, founded in 1890. There was a considerable overlap in the membership of the three organisations and Ivan Levinstein provided the leadership for all three mobilising the business-industrial community for more active efforts on behalf of the chemical... 

In 1889, and almost at the end of his career at BASF, Caro was called upon to act as expert witness in a case of patent litigation in which Ewer Pick attacked the Congo red patent. Some commentators have wondered why Caro was involved in this case, especially since it appeared to have nothing to do with BASF. Thus Herbert Levinstein (1878-1956), who had taken over the Manchester-based dyemaking business of his father, Ivan Levinstein (1845-1916), during World War I, commented in his 1949 Douglas Lecture before the British Society of Dyers and Colourists What interest the BASF had in Caro s last piece of work for them is hard to see . ... 

Ivan Levinstein s father raised his family in Berlin, in which city he owned a calico printing factory. This business failed, and Levinstein Senior became a political and financial correspondent as well as an agent for the Rothschilds banking interests. Another failure was his attempt to gain the favour of Bismarck early in 1859. He then sent some of his many children abroad, where certain sons became engaged in the merchanting of natural dyes, especially in London. 

Like Caro, Ivan Levinstein was educated at the Gewerbeinstitut in Berlin. There, Ivan studied the new aniline dyes, especially aniline red (fuchsine or magenta). In the early 1860s Levinstein Senior set up a factory in Berlin for the manufacture of synthetic dyes and in which the teenaged Ivan appears to have played a role. In 1864, however, Ivan Levinstein arrived in Salford, next to Manchester, and was soon preparing magenta on a small scale. By this time, blue and violet derivatives of magenta were available. 

During the following years Ivan Levinstein built up a reputation for the manufacture of aniline, its salts (used in aniline black printing), and aniline dyes. The failure of his brother Hugo to secure a process for the aniline blue when sued in a case of patent infringement in 1865 led Ivan to consider new patent-free processes and starting materials for preparing dyes, notably the use of toluene... 

See M. Wyler, Ivan Levinstein - What I Know of Him (Manchester, 1937), reprinted in Journal of the Society of Dyers and Colourists, 55 (1939), 142-146. Wyler and others have pondered over the reasons for Levinstein s failure to win the fast red AV case. 

Ivan Levinstein manufactured another of Caro s inventions, again a naphthalene derivative, without recourse to a licensing arrangement, namely the yellow dye naphthol yellow (the 7-sulphonic acid derivative of 2,4-dinitronaphthol), patented by Caro in December 1879. It was found to be an inexpensive dye for wool and silk. Levinstein s chemists undertook a number of improvements in the process, as they had done with fast red AV, and these were patented in England and the United States towards the end of 1882. Two years later, BASF made preparations for a fight with Levinstein over patent infringement. 

The position became so critical that Otto Witt, from the end of 1885 an academic chemist and consultant to BASF, agreed early in 1886, in deference to the wishes of Caro, not to publish the results of his work on naphthol yellow. The aim was to prevent their having any influence on the negotiations, over both patents and business, in the United States and England, The BASF tactic enabled it to bring about an agreement with Ivan Levinstein for mutual sharing of the British and United States markets. 

Heinrich Caro s relationship with Ivan Levinstein did not suffer from the exclusion of BASF from the British benzopurpurine market. On the contrary, their friendship lost none of its earlier intensity, especially after Caro left BASF on 1 January 1890. He could now, in private at least, permit himself to approve ftilly of Levinstein s new partnership with the rivals of BASF. On 16 January 1890, Caro advised Levinstein ... 

A.S. Travis, Heinrich Caro and Ivan Levinstein Uniting the colours of Ludwigshafen and Lancashire , in this volume. 

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