Have You a Tiger In Your Family?

Army Number : 420

Biography :

Educated at Rugby School and RMC Sandhurst, Hugh Cott was commissioned into The Leicestershire Regiment on 17.12.1919 and served until 1922, employed as a camouflage expert. He had intended to become a priest, and in 1922 went to Selwyn College, Cambridge, to read theology. After his first year he went on the university expedition to South America, where he became fascinated by natural history, and changed his studies to zoology on his return. He then went on expeditions in South America and on research trips to Africa. He was a lecturer in Zoology at Bristol University from 1928 until 1932, when he moved to Glasgow University. He studied under another advocate of military camouflage, John Graham Kerr. His thesis, which he completed in 1935 under a Carnegie Fellowship, was on 'adaptive coloration' – both camouflage and warning coloration – in the Anura (frogs). In 1938 he was made a Doctor of Science at Glasgow, and he became a Zoology lecturer at Cambridge University and Strickland Curator of Birds at the university's Museum of Zoology.
For the Second World War he was commissioned 2Lt in the Royal Engineers on 14.10.1940, working as a camouflage expert for the British Army and helping to influence War Office policy on camouflage. He was a camouflage instructor from 1940–45, and was chief instructor at the Camouflage Development and Training Camp at Helwan, Egypt. In the rank of Temporary Captain he was Mentioned in Despatches (L.G. 30.6.1942). After the War, Cott returned to Cambridge, becoming a Fellow of Selwyn College in 1945; he worked there until he retired in 1967. He died in 1987, aged 86 years.
He has an extensive personal entry in Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_B._Cott

Date of Birth : 6.7.1900

Place of Birth : Ashby Magna, Leicestershire

Date of Death : 18.4.1987

Place of Death : Stoke Abbott, Dorset

Civil Occupation : zoologist, scientific illustrator and photographer

Period of Service : 1918-22; 1940-45

Conflicts : WW2

Places Served : England, Egypt