William Roy Piggott (18 July 1914 – 20 May 2008) was a student of Sir Edward Appleton who transferred a large group of German specialists from Austria into the British Zone of Occupation in Germany in 1945. He edited the still valid official booklet of reduction rules for ionospheric soundings with

Karl Rawer Professor Rawer at his 104th birthday in 2017 Karl Maria Alois Rawer (19 April 1913 – 17 April 2018) was a German specialist in radio wave propagation and the ionosphere. He developed the analytical code to determine suitable frequency ranges f ...

and was engaged in international activities during the International Geophysical Year (IGY) and for a long time afterwards.

Biography

Before the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

, Piggott was experimenting in

nuclear physics Nuclear physics is the field of physics that studies atomic nuclei and their constituents and interactions, in addition to the study of other forms of nuclear matter. Nuclear physics should not be confused with atomic physics, which studies the ...

. Seriously contaminated, he switched over to the Cavendish Laboratory Cambridge with studies of the ionosphere and of Shortwave propagation, then for many decades at Radio Research Station Slough, again under Sir Edward. In order to collect German scientific results in his field, when he was ordered to dissolve Walter Dieminger´s relevant German organization. When he came to

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

where the German group had arrived, he decided, despite his orders, to save that group for Britain by transferring it into the British zone of Germany. Pretending an order of Sir Edward he assembled about 100 lorries and relevant British military personnel to drive the group unnoticed over two frontiers of occupation zones into the British zone of Germany. Military radio supervision, however, seized his communications and attributed these erroneously to a manoeuvre in the Russian occupation zone. The matter was estimated to be serious and was brought up to

Sir Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from 1 ...

, who was amused by this. Piggott was dismissed with a reprimand. Piggot was actively engaged with the International Geophysical Year, first by his co-authorship in the series of "Instruction Manuals" then as a member of an ionospheric "World wide soundings Committee", established by the

International Union of Radio Science The International Union of Radio Science (abbreviated ''URSI'', after its French name, french: link=no, Union radio-scientifique internationale) is one of 26 international scientific unions affiliated to the International Council for Science ( ...

(URSI). For the first time this group produced international rules for reducing ionospheric records (

ionogram An ionosonde, or chirpsounder, is a special radar for the examination of the ionosphere. The basic ionosonde technology was invented in 1925 by Gregory Breit and Merle A. Tuve and further developed in the late 1920s by a number of prominent phys ...

s). With

, he edited these rules with explanations in an official, still valid edition of the "URSI Monographs" During several decades, "Uncle Roy" patiently advised the station personal. Later Piggott concentrated his interest on the ionosphere in the Polar regions. He became the head of atmospheric sciences at the British Antarctic Survey, and visited that organization's

Halley Research Station Halley Research Station is a research facility in Antarctica on the Brunt Ice Shelf operated by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). The base was established in 1956 to study the Earth's atmosphere. Measurements from Halley led to the disco ...

and intensively studied the data it obtained.Article "Roy Piggott, international leader in ionosphereic physics",TimesOnline June 30, 2008

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Piggott, William Roy English physicists 1914 births 2008 deaths