Robert S. Kerr

Robert Samuel Kerr (1896 to 1963) was an American businessman and politician from Oklahoma who built one of the leading independent oil companies in the state before entering public life. He co-founded the Anderson-Kerr Drilling Company, which grew successful by the late 1920s, and after his partner retired, geologist Dean McGee joined the firm in 1936; it was renamed Kerr-McGee Oil Industries in 1946 and diversified into drilling and processing fuels and minerals, including uranium and helium. Kerr served as the 12th governor of Oklahoma from 1943 to 1947 and was elected to the United States Senate three times, where he chaired the Senate Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences from 1961 until his death in 1963. He championed the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System, a federal water project linking the Arkansas River to the Gulf of Mexico that reshaped the economy of Oklahoma. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/