Career
Little is known of his early life but he sailed on ships and rose to command a ship. In 1820 he settled in Calcutta and took an interest in scientific pursuits. He wrote many scientific papers about geology, botany, mineralogy, and meteorology in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal.
Foreign a while he was a curator of the Museum of Economic Geology.
In 1829 he wrote Examination and analysis of some specimens of iron ore from Burdwan and On the fertilising principles of the inundations of the Hugli in the Asiatic Society journal. In 1832, he compiled a list of the plants of economic importance and from 1835 he wrote on a variety of topics including descriptions of fish, reviews of fossil finds in South America and on geology.
He sometimes reviewed and translated content published in other journals. In 1833 a cyclone hit Calcutta and Piddington took little interest in it but in 1838 he stumbled on the "" by (then) Lieutenant-Colonel William Reid and this led him to return to his sailing experience and take an interest in ship logs.
He was assisted by Captain Christopher Biden, the Master Attendant at Madras.
He coined the word "cyclone" and wrote a series of works (23 memoirs in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal) on the topic. He noticed that the storms had a calm centre and that the winds around them ran anticlockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern hemisphere. He also held other positions including as a secretary to the Agricultural and Horticultural Society and President of Marine Courts of Enquiry.