Kerr (surname)

Kerr is a Scottish surname ⁱ/kɛr/. See Clan Kerr for the Scottish origins.

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Kerr

Kerr may refer to:

People

Places

Buildings and institutions

Dams and lakes

Science and technology

Plants and animals

Other uses

Kerr (given name)

While Kerr is traditionally a Scottish surname, it is also used as an English language given name. People with the given name Kerr include:

See also

Robert Kerr (writer)

Robert Kerr FRSE FSA FRCSE (1759 – 11 October 1813) was a Scottish surgeon, scientific writer and translator.

Life

Kerr was born in Bughtridge, Roxburghshire, the son of a jeweller. He was sent to the High School in Edinburgh.

He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and practised at the Edinburgh Foundling Hospital as a surgeon. He translated several scientific works into English, such as Antoine Lavoisier's work of 1789, Traité Élémentaire de Chimie, published under the title Elements of Chemistry in a New Systematic Order containing All the Modern Discoveries, in 1790. In 1792, he published The Animal Kingdom, the first two volumes of a four-tome translation of Linnaeus' Systema Naturae, which is often cited as the taxonomic authority for a great many species. (He never did the remaining two volumes.)

In 1794 he left his post as a surgeon to manage a paper mill. He lost much of his fortune with this enterprise. Out of economical necessity he began writing again in 1809, publishing a variety of minor works, for instance a General View of the Agriculture of Berwickshire. His last work was a translation of Cuvier's Recherches sur les ossements fossiles de quadrupedes, which was published after Kerr's death under the title "Essays on the Theory of the Earth".