Dr. Paul F. Kerr (12 February 1897 – 27 February 1981) was a Professor of Mineralogy at

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

. During the second World War, he was tasked with locating and procuring supplies of uranium for the

Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development program undertaken during World War II to produce the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States in collaboration with the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the ...

. Kerr had an academic interest in the geology of

tungsten Tungsten (also called wolfram) is a chemical element; it has symbol W and atomic number 74. It is a metal found naturally on Earth almost exclusively in compounds with other elements. It was identified as a distinct element in 1781 and first ...

uranium Uranium is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Ura ...

and

clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolinite, ). Most pure clay minerals are white or light-coloured, but natural clays show a variety of colours from impuriti ...

minerals. He pioneered the use of X-rays in the process of mineral identification and is considered to be one of the fathers of applied mineralogy. At Columbia University he was instrumental in the founding of the

Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory The Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) is a research, research institution specializing in the Earth science and climate change. Though part of Columbia University, it is located on a separate closed campus in Palisades, New York. The obs ...

Academic career

Paul Francis Kerr graduated from

Occidental College Occidental College (informally Oxy) is a private liberal arts college in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1887 as a coeducational college by clergy and members of the Presbyterian Church, it became non-sectarian in 1910. It is ...

and obtained his doctorate in geology from

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

in 1923. His dissertation was entitled "The determination of opaque ore minerals by X-ray diffraction patterns". Kerr became a lecturer at Columbia University in 1924 and was appointed Instructor in 1925, Assistant Professor in 1926, Associate Professor in 1932, and full Professor in 1940. From 1959 he held the title of Newberry Professor of Mineralogy. Paul F. Kerr also served as Secretary of the

Mineralogical Society of America The Mineralogical Society of America (MSA) is a scientific membership organization. MSA was founded in 1919 for the advancement of mineralogy, crystallography, geochemistry, and petrology, and promotion of their uses in other sciences, industry, ...

from 1934 to 1944 and was its President in 1946.

Manhattan Project

On October 9, 1941, shortly before the United States entered World War II, President

Franklin D. Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), also known as FDR, was the 32nd president of the United States, serving from 1933 until his death in 1945. He is the longest-serving U.S. president, and the only one to have served ...

approved a crash program to develop the

atomic bomb A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission or atomic bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear weapon), producing a nuclear expl ...

. The key raw material for the project was uranium, which was used as fuel for the reactors, as feed that was transformed into plutonium, and, in its enriched form, in the atomic bomb itself. There were four known major deposits of uranium in 1940: in Colorado, in northern Canada, in Joachimsthal in Czechoslovakia, and in the

Belgian Congo The Belgian Congo (, ; ) was a Belgian colonial empire, Belgian colony in Central Africa from 1908 until independence in 1960 and became the Republic of the Congo (Léopoldville). The former colony adopted its present name, the Democratic Repu ...

. A professor at Columbia University, Kerr was seconded to work on the Manhattan Project, tasked with locating and procuring supplies of uranium. As part of this assignment, he traveled to

Katanga Province Katanga was one of the four large provinces created in the Belgian Congo in 1914. It was one of the eleven provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo between 1966 and 2015, when it was split into the Tanganyika Province, Tanganyika, Hau ...

in the

, he also visited and assessed the Canadian Eldorado deposit on

Great Bear Lake Great Bear Lake (; ) in the boreal forest of Canada is the largest List of lakes of Canada, lake entirely in Canada (Lake Superior and Lake Huron are larger but straddle the Canada–United States border, Canada–US border), the fourth-larges ...

, and the vanadium mines of the

Colorado Plateau The Colorado Plateau is a physiographic and desert region of the Intermontane Plateaus, roughly centered on the Four Corners region of the Southwestern United States. This plateau covers an area of 336,700 km2 (130,000 mi2) within w ...

. Kerr's association with the Manhattan Project and later with the

Atomic Energy Commission Many countries have or have had an Atomic Energy Commission. These include: * National Atomic Energy Commission, Argentina (1950–present) * Australian Atomic Energy Commission (1952–1987) * Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission (1973–present) * ...

continued until late in the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

International Atomic Energy Agency

Immediately after the second world war, Kerr was asked by the

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) is a nonpartisan international affairs think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C., with operations in Europe, South Asia, East Asia, and the Middle East, as well as the United States. Foun ...

to chair a commission to investigate problems with the international inspection of atomic materials. He was appointed by the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...

in 1955 to prepare study materials for the First International Congress on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in Geneva.

Mineral nomenclature

In 1949, Kerr and Johannes F. Vaes were the first to describe

Sengierite Sengierite is a rare oxide and hydroxide mineral, chemically a copper and uranyl vanadate, belonging to the carnotite group. Its chemical formula is Cu2(OH)2 O2VO4sub>2·6H2O. Sengierite was first discovered at the Luiswishi Mine about north ...

, a radioactive mineral discovered at the

Luiswishi Mine The Luiswishi mine is an open cut copper and cobalt mine in Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Early years Luiswishi was one of the first copper and cobalt mines to be exploited in Katanga by Belgium, opened around 1 ...

about 20 km north of Lubumbashi in

.Vaes, J.F.; Kerr, P.F. (1949). Sengierite: a preliminary description. American Mineralogist, Volume 34, pp. 109–120
PDF
/ref> Kerr also had a part in the naming of at least 7 other minerals-

Alleghanyite Alleghanyite is a moderately rare humite mineral with formula Mn5(SiO4)2(OH)2, belonging to the nesosilicates class. In general its occurrences are related with metamorphic (metamorphosed) manganese deposits. The mineral is named after Alleghany ...

Cattierite Cattierite (CoS2) is a cobalt sulfide mineral found in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It was discovered together with the nickel sulfide vaesite by Johannes F. Vaes, a Belgian mineralogist and named after Felicien Cattier, who was chairman of ...

Dickite Dickite () is a phyllosilicate clay mineral named after the metallurgical chemist Allan Brugh Dick, who first described it. It is chemically composed of 20.90% aluminium, 21.76% silicon, 1.56% hydrogen and 55.78% oxygen. It has the same composit ...

, Hydrotungstite, Tungomelane,

Umohoite Umohoite is a rare oxide and hydroxide mineral. The name of this mineral reflects its composition: uranyl (U), molybdate (Mo) and water (). Its chemical formula is (UO2)MoO4·2H2O. Umohoite's type location is in Marysvale Marysvale is a to ...

, and

Vaesite Vaesite ( Ni S2) is a mineral found together with cattierite in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is named after Johannes F. Vaes, a Belgian mineralogist. It is part of the pyrite group The pyrite group of minerals is a set of cubic crystal s ...

. File:Sengierite-497485.jpg, Sengierite File:Alleghanyite-21573.jpg, Alleghanyite File:Dickite-418761.jpg, Dickite File:Vaesite-626130.jpg, Vaesite File:Umohoite-Calcurmolite-201159.jpg, Umohoite

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kerr, Paul F. 1897 births 1981 deaths People from Hemet, California Columbia University faculty Stanford University alumni Occidental College alumni Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory people