Dyson Perrins Laboratory

The Royal Society of Chemistry Historic Chemical Landmark has been awarded to the renowned Dyson Perrins Laboratory for its nine decades of achievement in the field of organic chemistry. 

The plaque was presented to the university's Vice-Chancellor Sir Colin Lucas by RSC chief executive David Giachardi, who paid tribute to the peerless work of the laboratory which was funded in 1916 by profits from Worcestershire Sauce.

In a light-hearted gesture to remember Mr Dyson Perrins, the sauce heir who gave the money, David Giachardi joined Oxford's Chairman of Chemistry Professor Graham Richards in a Bloody Mary drink (an ingredient of which is the famed sauce) in the new £64.5 million laboratory opened this year by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.

Special lecturer at the event was Sir Jack Baldwin, regarded by some as the world's greatest organic chemist, who discussed the chemistry of creation and the new directions of the science in the 21st century which followed a History of the Dyson Perrins Laboratory presented by Dr John Jones. .

The plaque reads: