NOTED SEISMOLOGIST

Hokitika Guardian, 7 June 1929, Page 7

NOTED SEISMOLOGIST

THE LATE FATHER PIGOT.

SYDNEY, May 30,

.Science is the poorer for the passing and the richer 'for the work of the late nr. Pigot, whose death occurred recently at lliverview, Sydney’s leading Homan Ctaholio College, where bis ob servatory was installed.

A little, frail man—as weak, physically as he was a giant mentally—Dr. Pigot moved and had his being in Sydney only in the circles of science and in other domains of culture and learning when lie was not at his beloved sanctuary at Riverview, amid thepeac'* and quiet and beauty of the Lane Cove river. Outside of science be wa< known personally to a very ifew people in Sydney. The public generally heard of him only when he was dragged into the limelight through the columns of the Press. Publicity he shunned, me graces of learning he carried modestly. A recluse, he cared not for the outside world or for its material battles and conquests. He will he missed, not only by Science, »but by the Fress of Sydney, for if there was a seismological disturbance, even in the remotest part of the world, the newspapers always turned to him, and not in vain, to throw some light on it in a popular form which could be readily understood by what is termed the man in the street.

Strangely enough, Father Pigot was showing one of the Japanese delegates to the Science Congress in Sydney over the seismological department of his activities at Riverview when his delicate instruments registered clearly the calamitous earthquake in Japan. That was in 1923. It was at Gopndiwindi, Queensland, during the solar eclipse, that use was first made of one of his most notable instruments. Dear old Dr. Pigot died as he lived, unobtrusively.