Irish physician and botanist known as the founding father of botany in Thailand, where he lived for three decades. Kerr was born at Kinlough, Co. Leitrim and after his schooling in Dorchester, England, earned degrees in botany and medicine at Trinity College, Dublin. Following this he moved to Siam (Thailand) in 1902, where he served as a medical officer, at first in Bangkok and then in Chiang Mai in the north of the country. He was later put in charge of the botany section of the Ministry of Commerce there from 1921-1931. He left Thailand during the First World War in order to serve in the Royal Army Medical Core, but returned in 1918.
While not working as a physician, Kerr devoted himself to studying the flora of Thailand and during his years in the Ministry of Commerce determined to make a thorough botanical survey of the country, building up a comprehensive herbarium of Thai plants. He completed this task in 1933 with a final trip to the north-east of the country and the Laos border. He continued to explore other parts of Southeast Asia for some months after his retirement in the 1930s, before returning to England and settling in Hayes, Middlesex. Kerr's private herbarium of more than 21,500 specimens collected by himself, plus more material gathered by others, was received by the British Museum in the year of his death. He had, prior to this, sent his specimens to Professor W.G. Craib at the University of Aberdeen for description. Craib used Kerr's material to compile his Florae Siamensis Enumeratio, which Kerr continued after Craib's death in 1933. Kerr also published observations from his fieldwork in the Journal of Siamese Natural History and Kew Bulletin. His paper "Early Botanists in Thailand" appeared in the Journal of the Thailand Research Society, Natural History Supplement in 1939. Little collecting was carried out in Thailand after Kerr's departure until the Thai Royal Forest Department began new collecting initiatives in the 1950s. A number of species are named in his honour, such as Dipterocarpus kerrii King and Loranthus kerrii Craib (basionym of Dendrophthoe kerrii (Craib) Barlow). Kerr was married to Daisy Muriel Judd in 1903. Judd died of malaria in Thailand in 1903, leaving behind their three daughters.
Sources:
I.H. Burkill, 1928, Gardens' Bulletin, Straits Settlement, 4: 125
M. Jacobs, 1962, "Reliquiae Kerrianae", Blumea, 11: 427-493
D.J. Middleton, 2003, Telopea, 10(1): 34
M.A. Smith, 1943, Proceedings of the Linnean Society, 154(3): 285-286
M.J. van Steenis Kruseman, "Cyclopedia of Collectors", Flora Malesiana, online edn:
http://www.nationaalherbarium.nl/FMCollectors/K/KerrAFG.htm, accessed 5 January 2010.
