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William Roy Piggott (18 July 1914 – 20 May 2008) was a student ofSir Edward Appleton who transferred a large group of German specialists from Austria into theBritish Zone of Occupation in Germany in 1945. He edited the still valid official booklet of reduction rules for ionospheric soundings withKarl Rawer and was engaged in international activities during theInternational Geophysical Year (IGY) and for a long time afterwards.
Before theSecond World War, Piggott was experimenting innuclear physics. Seriously contaminated, he switched over to theCavendish Laboratory Cambridge with studies of theionosphere and ofShortwave 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 dissolveWalter Dieminger´s relevant German organization. When he came toAustria where the German group had arrived, he decided, despite his orders, to save that group for Britain by transferring it into theBritish 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 theRussian occupation zone. The matter was estimated to be serious and was brought up toSir Winston Churchill, who was amused by this. Piggott was dismissed with a reprimand.[1]
Piggot was actively engaged with theInternational Geophysical Year, first by his co-authorship in the series of "Instruction Manuals"[2] then as a member of an ionospheric "World wide soundings Committee", established by theInternational Union of Radio Science (URSI). For the first time this group produced international rules for reducing ionospheric records (ionograms). WithKarl Rawer, he edited these rules with explanations in an official, still valid edition of the "URSI Monographs"[3] During several decades, "Uncle Roy" patiently advised the station personal. Later Piggott concentrated his interest on the ionosphere in thePolar regions. He became the head of atmospheric sciences at theBritish Antarctic Survey, and visited that organization'sHalley Research Station and intensively studied the data it obtained.[4]