He was born in Woodbridge, Suffolk, and as a boy was an enthusiastic sailor of a small boat on the River Deben, an experience which gave him a lifelong love of sailing.

His doctoral research in Cambridge led to a PhD in 1936, and he then moved to the University of Oxford, where he became a fellow of Lincoln College and joined a team working under Howard Florey that included Ernst Chain.

When Florey and his team recognised the potential of the discovery for combating bacterial infection, they faced the problem of how to manufacture penicillin in sufficient quantities to be of use.

"On returning home, he realised that in haste and darkness, he had put his underpants on back to front, and noted this in his diary too, adding "It really looks as if penicillin may be of practical importance."

In order to conduct tests on human patients, even more of the drug had to be produced, and again it was Heatley who realised that the most effective vessel for this purpose was something like the porcelain bedpans in use at the Radcliffe Infirmary.

[6][7] Florey and his team thereafter decided to work only on sick children, who did not need such large doses of penicillin, until their methods of production improved.

[8] Eventually, Heatley and Florey travelled to the United States in 1941 because they wanted to produce about one kilogram of pure penicillin, and persuaded a laboratory in Peoria, Illinois, to develop larger-scale manufacturing of it.

"[9] Florey returned to Oxford that September, but Heatley stayed on in Peoria until December; then for the next six months, he worked at Merck & Co. in Rahway, New Jersey.

"Yet while Fleming, Florey and Chain jointly received the Nobel Prize for their work in 1945, Heatley's contribution was not fully recognized for another 45 years.

[11] Heatley is also mentioned alongside Florey and Chain, on another blue plaque, on the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology building on South Parks Road, Oxford.