Pigman, William Ward (1910-1977)

A professor and former chairman of the department of biochemistry at New York Medical College who was known for his work in carbohydrates – and was a suspected Soviet spy in the 1930s.

In the mid-1930s, Pigman worked for the National Bureau of Standards and for the Labor and Public Welfare Committee. In the late 1940s, he was a chemist with the Institute of Paper Chemistry in Appleton, Wisconsin. Beginning in 1954, he worked in the Department of Biochemistry at New York Medical College.

Whittaker Chambers named “Ward Pigman” as one of a small group of people who “actually turned over information” to him to be given to Soviet intelligence. However, Pigman said that he had never collaborated with Chambers. In his book, Witness, Chambers described Pigman under the pseudonym of “Abel Gross.”