Robert Kerr (writer)

Robert Kerr (1757 to 1813) was a Scottish surgeon who became better known as a writer on scientific and other subjects and as a translator. He was born at Bughtridge in Roxburghshire, studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and practised as a surgeon at the Edinburgh Foundling Hospital. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1788. His translation of Antoine Lavoisier's Traité Élémentaire de Chimie appeared in 1790 as Elements of Chemistry in a New Systematic Order, and in 1792 he published the first two volumes of The Animal Kingdom, a translation of Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. In 1794 he left surgery to manage a paper mill he had bought at Ayton in Berwickshire, lost much of his fortune on it, and from 1809 returned to writing, producing minor works such as a General View of the Agriculture of Berwickshire and, from 1811, a General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels in eighteen volumes. He died at Hope Park House in Edinburgh and is buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard.