The heads of the laboratory were the four consecutive Waynflete Professors of Chemistry:
# William Henry Perkin, Jr., from 1912 to 1929;
# Sir Robert Robinson, from 1930 to 1954. Nobel Prize winner, 1947;
# Sir Ewart Jones, from 1954 to 1978;
# Sir Jack Baldwin, from 1978 to 2003.
During its 87-year working life, the laboratory had an extremely distinguished career; it can claim a stake in shaping the scientific careers of two Nobel Laureates, namely Lord Todd (1957) and Sir John W. Cornforth (1975) who passed their formative years as young chemists in the laboratories.