contrasting tone — and countershading — shading guns into invisibility with lighter paint below, darker paint above. Kerr openly supported the controversial camouflage claims of American artist Abbott Handerson Thayer. Kerr's aim was to make ships difficult to spot and fool range finders by disrupting their outlines, or in his own words "to destroy completely the continuity of outlines by splashes of white", to make ships harder to hit with gunfire at long range. Kerr's principle was applied to ships in various ways, but Kerr found it difficult to promote or control the use of his camouflage ideas, and they fell out of favour after Churchill's departure from the Admiralty. The Royal Navy reverted to plain grey. A rival proposal for disruptive camouflage emerged in 1917 from the marine artist Norman Wilkinson. Wilkinson, unlike Kerr, had little difficulty fitting in with the naval establishment, and was put in charge of a large-scale program of painting ships in disruptive patterns that became known as "Dazzle camouflage". After the war, Kerr engaged in an unsuccessful legal dispute over the credit for creating dazzle camouflage. Wilkinson successfully promoted the false idea that Kerr's camouflage sought invisibility rather than image disruption. Kerr again influenced British camouflage in the Second World War, this time through his pupil Hugh B. Cott. Politics and late life Kerr was elected as Unionist MP for the Combined Scottish Universities at a by-election in 1935 after the MP and novelist John Buchan resigned his seat when he was appointed as Governor General of Canada. After his election to Parliament, Kerr resigned his professorship, and moved to Hertfordshire. He held the seat until the university constituencies were abolished for the 1950 general election, serving for a time as Chairman of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee. He was knighted in the King's Birthday Honours in 1939. The University of St Andrews awarded him an honorary doctorate (LLD) in 1950. He died on 21 April 1957 at Barley House in Royston, Hertfordshire. Family He married twice. First, in 1903, to Elizabeth Mary Kerr. She died in 1934. He remarried in 1936 to Isabella Dunn Clapperton (née Macindoe), a widow. Legacy The Zoology Building of the University of Glasgow was renamed the Graham Kerr Building in his name. Publications Textbook of Embryology with the Exception of Mammals (1919) Zoology for Medical Students (1921) Evolution (1926) An Introduction to Zoology (1929) References External links Papers