The world’s poultry industry around 1970 had multiple millions of reasons to be thankful to Peter Biggs and colleagues for their seminal scientific studies on avian tumour-associated viruses. Peter, working at the Houghton Poultry Research Station (HPRS), had named Marek’s disease (MD) as a lymphoproliferative condition caused by a herpesvirus. This newly understood disease was a scourge of the developing poultry industry and, once the aetiological agent had been identified with clarity, the development of an attenuated cell-associated virus at HPRS and its subsequent commercialization as a vaccine provided the first ground-breaking tool for the control of the disease for the poultry industry. Several more vaccines developed by other groups worldwide were made available shortly afterwards, and vaccination with live attenuated vaccines remains the single most important method of control.
Professor Peter Biggs attending the 10th International Symposium on Marek's Disease and Avian Herpesviruses in July, 2014. Photo credit to the 10th International Symposium on Marek's Disease and Avian Herpesviruses, East Lansing, Michigan.
It was the good fortune of the poultry industry that both the funding research body – the Agricultural Research Council (ARC) at that time – and Peter had an interest in work on the “Avian Leukosis Complex”. The new programme had attracted Peter from Bristol University and he started work at HPRS in St Ives in 1959. In 1961 he was joined by LN (Jim) Payne and they went on to research some complementary and inter-related aspects of MD, viz. aetiology (Peter) and pathogenesis (Jim). In 1964 both shared the Tom Newman International Poultry Award for their research and shortly afterwards Peter received three further awards from the poultry sector or veterinary profession for his early work.
Peter was very proud of the efforts made at HPRS, and in his own words:
The right tools, people and commitment of funds enabled us at HPRS to go from convincingly transmitting the disease to isolating the causative agent, despite problems posed by its cell-associated nature, to producing a vaccine and running successful field trials all in the space of nine years!
By this time Peter had both proved himself as an international scientist of note, an excellent collaborator having made great efforts to engage with the main international laboratories, and a fine communicator. His burgeoning portfolio of skills was to become invaluable during the next phase of his career at the pinnacle of his field.
In 1974 Peter was the obvious choice to replace Dr Bob Gordon as Director of HPRS and he was at the helm for the succeeding 12 years as both scientific technologies and the poultry sector developed apace. Throughout that time, as he continued to lead his own research group, Peter was very hands-on running HPRS and he took a keen interest in the progress of all the research groups. He had much to do because, whilst the scientific outputs of HPRS were significant during his tenure, he also had to contend with many different sorts of non-scientific challenges, not least the significantly corrosive impacts of inflation on the costs of research; increasing political expectations that industry, not governments, should pay for research; perceptions of funding bodies that the importance of disease research was over-supported; and the political thinking that agriculture was becoming less important as a national industry. Administratively, these were very difficult times and it was probably an inevitability that (in 1986) the funding body (by then the Agricultural and Food Research Council) amalgamated the four research council-run animal disease research institutes into a single institute and Peter was appointed the first Director of the Institute for Animal Health (IAH).
Whilst HPRS was the smallest of the four institutes to be melded together as the new IAH (and to be closed completely in 1992 with staff transferring to a sister laboratory in Berkshire), Peter had built up HPRS as a progressive institute with some new facilities, new scientists and new areas of work, such as immunogenetics. Indeed, the small HPRS was uniquely able to boast that it had two Fellows of the Royal Society, viz. Peter elected in 1976 and Herbert Williams-Smith elected in 1980.
Born in Petersfield, Hampshire, in 1926, the Biggs family moved to Devon where his father was a Director of Music and his mother a teacher. Peter was initially educated at home in a small school run by his mother until he went to the preparatory school for Totnes Grammar School and thereafter as a boarder to Bedales School back in Hampshire where his father was part-time Director of Music. The family returned to Petersfield in 1939 and in 1940 Peter was evacuated to Massachusetts, USA, where he was “adopted” and sent to a progressive private school, from which he graduated in 1944. He then returned to his parents in London and joined the Royal Air Force as a trainee for aircrew and was demobilized in March 1948. His experience of, and thinking time in, the RAF led to a keener interest in biological subjects and the area of veterinary practice became a career choice. He thus applied to study at the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) in London and graduated in 1953. During his time at the RVC, Peter was particularly inspired by the lecturer Dr A.S. (Tony) King who taught the embryology, anatomy and physiology of the domestic chicken and he was subsequently drawn to the study of viruses and cancer and, most specifically, the text by Ellerman and Bang entitled “The leucosis of fowls and leucaemia problems” published in 1922.
Peter became a mentor to many scientists in later years. Perhaps his willingness to help others was due in part to the help given to him as a young graduate by Tony King, who moved from the RVC to the department of Veterinary Anatomy at Bristol and encouraged Peter to study there for a PhD from 1953. Indeed, Tony King became the de facto supervisor for the work of Peter on “Lymphoid tissue in the endocrine glands of the domestic fowl: its significance in health and disease”. After two years, in 1955, Peter was appointed Lecturer in Veterinary Clinical Pathology at Langford, Bristol, and simultaneously completed his PhD programme and pursued an interest in the avian leukosis complex. The years at Langford were very productive and he developed interests in transplantation, immunological tolerance and the graft-versus-host reaction – and serendipitously these were shared with Jim Payne, who was a final year veterinary student at Bristol. The two new colleagues soon enjoyed the publication of their first research papers, including one in the prestigious journal Nature. It was during this time that Peter developed his first experience of the nascent poultry industry and the considerable problems of disease that it faced.
The move to HPRS resulted in career-defining research for the benefit of the world's, poultry industry, and scientifically it was exceptional. In the face of continuing concern on losses from “Avian Leukosis Complex” and the lack of scientific understanding of it, in 1959 Peter initiated the establishment of the Leukosis Experimental Unit at HPRS. Outstanding research by Peter and his colleagues at this unit led to the discovery of a novel herpesvirus as the causative agent of Marek’s disease and the first-ever development of a live vaccine against the disease. The legacy of Marek’s disease research initiated by Peter at HPRS is actively pursued today by a number of groups at the Pirbright Institute (the successor to HPRS and the IAH). As part of the rebuilding programme at the Pirbright Institute, a new stand-alone poultry experimental facility has been named the “Biggs Building” in recognition of the contribution of Peter Biggs to avian science.
Further recognition of the scientific contributions of Peter was given by many organizations and institutions and in 1987 he was honoured by the Queen as a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) for “services to science”. The CBE and his prestigious Fellowship of the Royal Society, London, awarded in 1976, were the two honours that he regarded most highly, and in his words “Becoming a Fellow changed my life in many ways but particularly by the increased recognition and respect afforded by other scientists”. His other honours included the BOCM Poultry Science Award (1968), the J.T. Edwards Memorial Medal of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (1969), the Dalrymple-Champneys Cup and Medal (1973), the Bledisloe Veterinary Award of the Royal Agricultural Society of England (1977), the Wooldridge Memorial Medal of the British Veterinary Association (1978), the Joszef Marek Memorial Medal (1979), the Central Veterinary Society Victory Medal (1980), The Wolf Foundation Prize in Agriculture (1989) and the Chiron Award of the British Veterinary Association (1999).
Perhaps rather modestly, Peter has described being on the fringe of the formation and early days of the World Veterinary Poultry Association (WVPA). However, in 1971 Peter accepted the role of Secretary/Treasurer and, coincident at this time following two years of discussions led by Professor Klimeš (School of Agriculture in Brno, Czech Republic), the WVPA announced the introduction of a new poultry science journal under their aegis, to be known as Avian Pathology. Professor Klimeš was the first Editor-in-Chief and Peter was a member of the Editorial Board. However, soon after the first volume was published, Peter was appointed Editor-in-Chief and continued until 1987 when Jim Payne took over. The workload for Peter, who was heading the HPRS at the same time as leading the efforts to build the financial and management infrastructure around, and scientific credibility of, Avian Pathology, was considerable – not least because he read every paper that passed across his desk. Under his stewardship, Avian Pathology was to become one of the most respected poultry journals with its papers having some of the highest impact factors.
In 1981 Peter was elected President of the World's Poultry Science Association (WPSA).
For more than 70 years of his life, Peter was given invaluable support by his wife Jan, who he married in 1950. As a couple, they both led busy lives and retirement in 1988 did enable them to spend more time with each other and with the family and they were able to travel together to many parts of the world both new and familiar to them. Peter is survived by Jan and two sons, Andrew (a veterinarian specializing in bovine health) and John (an electronic engineer). A daughter, Alison, predeceased him.
In retirement, Peter still remained highly active in science and his roles included appointment as a Professor-at-Large at Cornell University for six years; appointment to the Executive Committee of the UK Institute for Biology, subsequently becoming President; appointment as a Vice President of the British Veterinary Association; appointment as a member of the Council of the Royal Society; and he was chairman of two poultry-related Committees, relinquishing the last only in late 2019!
Peter also maintained a love for singing in a choir, and even into his 90s he would attend choir practice in the evening despite having been out all day chairing a meeting of the British Egg Marketing Board Research and Education Trust. His enthusiasm for work at 90 years old simply seemed to reflect his life throughout – a wonderfully talented and personable man with the energy and commitment to make important things happen.