Robert Kenneth Wilson

Robert Kenneth Wilson MB BChir, FRCSEd (26 January 1899 – 6 June 1969) was a general surgeon and gynaecologist in London, who in 1934 supposedly took a photograph purporting to show the Loch Ness Monster.

During the Second World War Wilson joined the Special Operations Executive and was parachuted behind enemy lines into German-occupied Europe.

[5] He left school at the age of seventeen to join the Royal Artillery, serving on the Western Front in the First World War.

[6] He completed the clinical part of his medical studies at the London Hospital, qualifying with the Conjoint diploma (MRCS, LRCP) in 1923 and going on to graduate MB BChir in 1925.

[9] While on a shooting and fishing trip to the north of Scotland in 1934 with a friend, Maurice Chambers, Wilson took photographic plates to Ogston's chemists shop in Inverness to be developed and printed.

[12] After the death of Maurice Chambers in 1994, some of his personal papers revealed that the photograph had been an elaborate hoax by a group of conspirators.

[16] Wilson had been selected by the group as the 'front man' because he enjoyed a practical joke and because his status as a London surgeon might lend credibility to the story.

[17] On the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 Wilson closed his London practice and served in the 85th Field Regiment Royal Artillery in Northumberland with the rank of lieutenant colonel.

[18] He led the team codenamed Daniel II whose other members were Lt. Paul Sherrer of the Free French Forces and Sgt.

[19] On demobilisation Wilson returned to the UK and set up a fishery on the Solway Firth in southern Scotland where he remained for the next five years.