William Dakin (1883-1950), zoologist, studied in his native England and, as an Exhibition scholar, in Kiel, Germany. Having taught in Belfast, Liverpool and London, he was appointed to the chair of biology at the new University of Western Australia in 1913. There, during the First World War, he wrote a textbook, became president of the local Royal Society, and did much to raise the profile of the new institution. Having returned to England in 1920, and having published another text, he moved permanently to Sydney in early 1929. During his long professoriate he published books on whaling (1934) and the plankton of the New South Wales coast (1940), and delved into the life cycle of commercial prawns. He helped to establish the fisheries laboratory of the Commonwealth Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and he became a councillor of the CSIR in 1948. He was also active in developing science syllabuses for schools, and popularising science on the wireless, presenting the series Science in the News for the ABC. During the war, in 1941 he became director of camouflage for the Ministry of Home Security and published Art of Camouflage. Stressing, against opposition from the military, the difference between Australian landscapes and the English colours and light for which existing camouflage was designed, Dakin was instrumental in the development of camouflage specific to Australian conditions. Besides his books he published more than sixty scientific papers, and many of his students became prominent in their fields. Retiring at the end of 1948, he was made emeritus professor and awarded the Mueller medal in 1949. His major book, some thirty years in the making, was Australian Seashores, published in 1952, after his death.
