John Martin Munro Kerr (5 December 1868 – 7 October 1960) was Regius Professor of Midwifery at the University of Glasgow from 1927 to 1934. A scholar and surgeon of international acclaim he won both the Katherine Bishop Harman Prize in 1934 for his book Maternal Mortality and Morbidity (1933) and was the first recipient of the Blair Bell Medal for obstetrics and gynaecology.
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Early life
J. M. Munro Kerr was born at Kelvingrove Street in Glasgow in 1868 the son of George Munro Kerr (15 November 1836 – 23 June 1907), a Scottish ship-owner from Greenock, and Jessie Elizabeth Martin. His grandfather, John Kerr, had been a West Indian Merchant and ship-owner who married an American-born wife; Mary Clark. J. M. Munro Kerr graduated from the University of Glasgow MB CM in 1890. As a senior undergraduate he was present in 1889 when Murdoch Cameron performed the first series of follow-up Caesarean section operations at the Glasgow Royal Maternity Hospital, carried out after Cameron's famous initial success in 1888.
Professional career
Fluent in German and French, Munro Kerr spent a number of years after his graduation in Germany, Austria and Ireland studying obstetrics and gynaecology at Berlin, Vienna and Dublin. From 1894 he acted as Professorial Assistant to Murdoch Cameron, a position that entailed both academic work at the University of Glasgow and practical experience on the obstetrical and gynaecological wards of Glasgow Royal Maternity Hospital and Glasgow's Western Infirmary.