Stanley Kerr
Stanley Elphinstone Kerr (March 30, 1894 – December 14, 1976) was an American humanitarian, clinical biochemist, and educator. He was born in Hopewell, New Jersey, the son of a Presbyterian minister.
As a biochemist at Walter Reed Hospital, he left the United States in 1919 to help Armenian refugees through Near East Relief. In Aleppo he worked as a medical and sanitary officer during the Armenian march through the desert and helped rescue Armenian children from Kurdish and Turkoman families.
In 1921 he and Elsa Reckman joined a Near East Relief orphanage for Armenian children at Nahr Ibrahim, Lebanon. They married in 1922. The orphanage closed in 1923 after a typhoid outbreak.
He earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Pennsylvania in 1925, then became chair of the Department of Biochemistry at the American University of Beirut. Elsa Kerr served as Dean of Women at the same university. They had four children: Marion, Dorothy, Douglas, and Malcolm H. Kerr.
In 1965 he retired as a Distinguished Professor after 40 years on the faculty. Lebanon awarded him the Order of Merit and the National Order of the Cedar (Chevalier). He and Elsa moved to Princeton, New Jersey. He wrote The Lions of Marash (1973), a firsthand account of the Armenian massacres.
Stanley Kerr died in 1976 in Princeton. His son Malcolm H. Kerr was a former president of the American University of Beirut, and his grandson is Steve Kerr, the basketball coach and broadcaster.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 07:38 (CET).