Robert Kerr (writer)
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Robert Kerr (20 October 1757 – 11 October 1813) was a Scottish surgeon, writer on scientific and other subjects, and translator.
Life
Kerr was born in 1757<ref>Template:Cite ODNB</ref> in Bughtridge, Roxburghshire, the son of James Kerr, a jeweller, who served as MP for Edinburgh 1747–1754,<ref name="FRSE">Template:Cite book</ref> and his wife Elizabeth. 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 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1788. His proposers were Alexander Fraser Tytler, James Russell and Andrew Dalzell.<ref name="FRSE" /> At this time, he lived at Foresters Wynd off the Royal Mile in Edinburgh.<ref>Edinburgh and Leith Post Office Directory 1784-90</ref>
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.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> 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 translated the remaining two volumes.)
In 1794, he left his post as a surgeon to manage a paper mill at Ayton in Berwickshire which he had purchased. 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".
His other works included a massive historical study entitled A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels in eighteen volumes. Kerr began the series in 1811, dedicating it to Sir Alexander Cochrane, K.B., Vice-Admiral of the White. Publication did not cease following Kerr's death in 1813; the latter volumes were published into the 1820s.
He died at home, Hope Park House,<ref>Edinburgh Post Office Directory 1813</ref> east of the Meadows in Edinburgh, where he had lived since 1810, and is buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard in central Edinburgh against the eastern wall. His stone is added to a much earlier (1610) ornate stone monument. His son, David Wardrobe Kerr (1796–1815) lies with him.
Selected writings
See also
Notes
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References
Further reading
- Template:Cite book- The introduction by Douglas McKie has information on Robert Kerr, the book's translator.
External links
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- Contemporary review of the "Essays on the Theory of the Earth"
- Significant Scots: Robert Kerr from ElectricScotland.com.
- 1757 births
- 1813 deaths
- Scottish science writers
- Scottish zoologists
- Scottish agronomists
- 19th-century Scottish historians
- Scottish surgeons
- Scottish travel writers
- Scottish male writers
- British mammalogists
- Alumni of the University of Edinburgh
- Translators from French
- Writers from the Scottish Borders
- Burials at Greyfriars Kirkyard
- 18th-century Scottish scientists
- 18th-century British zoologists
- 19th-century British zoologists
- 19th-century Scottish non-fiction writers
- 19th-century Scottish male writers
- 19th-century Scottish writers
- 19th-century Scottish scientists
- 18th-century Scottish male writers
- 19th-century Scottish translators
- 18th-century Scottish translators
- Scottish taxonomists