Researching Frank Kerr

In 1940, Frank had joined the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) radiophysics laboratory in Sydney, Australia under the mentorship of Joseph Lade Pawsey. He pioneered the use of the magnetron, and also studied superrefraction.

In Australia in late 1951, Kerr used a specially built 36-foot transit telescope, the largest dish of its kind in Australia, and started mapping the Magellanic Clouds, discovering considerable amounts of neutral hydrogen and an extended envelope around both clouds. From 1954 to 1955, Kerr was a member of the team that determined the rotation of the Magellanic Clouds and their masses. Kerr coined the term "galactic warp" to refer to the distorting effect of the Magellanic Clouds' gravity on the shape of our own galaxy.

Over the years he worked with various astronomers, including Colin Gum and Gart Westerhout.

From 1966 to 1979, he was a visiting, then full, professor of astronomy at the University of Maryland, College Park. Kerr was the Director of the Astronomy Program during the mid-1970s. From 1978 to 1985, Kerr then acted as the Provost of the Mathematical and Physical Sciences and Engineering Division at the University of Maryland.

He died of cancer at Silver Spring, Maryland.

An all-round sportsman, Kerr was awarded a Triple Blue at Melbourne University for athletics, cricket and football. In addition to his 40 senior games in the VFL, he also played pennant cricket for four seasons and captained the Melbourne University Athletics Club.

Kerr, who graduated from Melbourne University with a medical degree, was the Victorian selected to be a Rhodes Scholar in 1913. Retired from football, Kerr moved to England and continued his studies at University College. His academic career was interrupted by World War I, during which he spent time in France with Britain's Royal Army Medical Corps. In 1915 he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) for showing "conspicuous gallantry and splendid devotion to duty" during fighting in Givenchy, when he twice crawled under the parapet to bring in wounded soldiers, while under fire from the Germans who were within 70 yards.

Kerr completed his studies when he returned to England and practised medicine for three years.

Back in Melbourne, Kerr was appointed Commonwealth Medical Officer in 1925.

Kerr was born in Perth, Western Australia, to Gwendoline Lisle and H. Douglas Kerr. All his cricket, however, was played in New Zealand. His first-class debut for Otago came when he was 18, against Canterbury during the 1934–35 Plunket Shield season. A right-handed batsman, Kerr played another three Plunket Shield games the following season, as well as a match against the touring MCC team. Against Auckland in the first match of the season, he scored 44 not out from eighth in the batting order, his highest first-class score. Later in the season, he was promoted to third in the batting order, but had little success. Kerr's final first-class matches came during the 1936–37 season, when he played three games for only 28 runs (at an average of 4.66). His final high-level match for Otago, however, came against Canterbury in December 1942, though it did not have first-class status.

By that time, Kerr was enlisted as a pilot officer in the RNZAF. He was killed in the Solomon Islands in July 1943, as the co-pilot of a Lockheed Hudson flying a patrol between Bougainville and New Georgia. The plane was attacked by eight Japanese Zeros, and was eventually forced to ditch near a small island off the coast of Vella Lavella. The five crew, including Kerr, survived the ditching, but were afterward strafed by the Japanese, with only one member, Sgt. Trevor Ganley, surviving. Kerr was survived by his wife, Flora Margaret Mary Kerr.