He obtained a two-year Rockefeller Studentship to work at the École de Chimie, University of Geneva, studying the thermoelastic properties of living muscle and long-chain polymers using X-ray crystallography.
[4] He was made a fellow of the Institute of Biology, was a visiting professor at the University of Washington in 1959, and received the Trail Award from the Linnean Society in 1960 for his work on microscopy.
He wrote about Needham's trip to Xian: "If he had a cast iron excuse for going there he could fly in three hours, but his God complex is titillated by going by truck.
In response, Needham wrote a formal assessment of Picken where he included this characterization: "a more unfriendly and disagreeable colleague I never hope to meet.
[5] His many publications show his broad ethnomusicological interests, including a book on instrument studies and music of Turkey.
He was elected to a high number of academic positions, amongst them are: Fellow of the British Academy (1973) and Docteur Honoris Causa of the Université de Paris X, Nanterre (1988).