Kerr was born in Roxburghshire as the son of a jeweller. 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 Traitée Elémentaire de Chimie in 1789. 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'sRecherches 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 1820's.
External links
Contemporary review (http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/cuvier3.htm) of the "Essays on the Theory of the Earth"
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