Leaves behind an enduring legacy of philanthropy and service to EAPS and MIT.

The Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences was saddened to hear alumnus and friend Breene Kerr ’51 (XII) passed away on September 2nd at his home in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Kerr was a Life Member Emeritus of the MIT Corporation and a former Chair of the MIT Investment Committee and EAPS Visiting Committee.

Son of Robert S. Kerr, an Oklahoma governor and U.S. Senator, Breene Kerr first came east to study geology at MIT in 1947. After graduating in 1951, and then serving in the Army until 1953, his first job as a geologist was with Kerr-McGee, a company his father had co-founded. Kerr also worked for three years at NASA under Director James E. Webb. He later became Vice President of Kerr-McGee, founded Kerr Consolidated and the Resource Analysis and Management Group, and went on to become a founding member of the Board of Directors of the Chesapeake Energy Corporation.

Kerr was known as a great philanthropist who, along with his late wife Sheryl, extended their generosity to all of the communities where they resided. His generous legacy at EAPS and MIT includes the Kerr-McGee Career Development Professorship and the Grayce B. Kerr Fellowship Fund. He also founded the Breene M. Kerr (1951) Professorship, the Kerr Scholarship Fund and the Colin W. Scarborough III (1952) Crew Endowment Fund at MIT. Mr. Kerr had a great love of sailing and the ocean and was also a Life Trustee of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

EAPS and the MIT community have lost an ambassador and a good friend.