Note: The discovery of this compound is credited to Dr Wilton George Turner who in the London winter of 1830-1831 isolated it by accident.
Turner was born in Clarendon, Jamaica in 1810 and died in the Turks Islands in 1855. He obtained a PhD from the University of Geissen in 1838 (with Justus von Liebig).
It was described thus:
This beautiful salt crystallizes in thin elongated prisms, which appear black by reflection, blue by transmitted light, and green when reduced to powder. Its solution is green and red at the same time, except by candlelight, when it is of a pure red