May 1867 he gave a course of four lectures on spectrum analysis at the Royal Institution (Chemical News, vol. xv.), and explained the bearing of the method on astronomy to the working men of Exeter during the meeting there of the British Association in 1869 (Popular Science Review, viii. 335).
Miller prepared in 1851, at the request of the government, with Professors Graham and Hofmann, a ‘Report on the Metropolitan Water Supply’ (Quarterly Journal of the Chemical Society, iv. 376), investigated the combined action of water and air upon lead, and lectured before the Chemical Society in 1865 on the analysis of drinking water. He reported to the British Association in 1857 on the ‘Recent Progress of Electro-chemical Research’ (Report, p. 158), and served on the several committees appointed by the same body to superintend the working of Kew Observatory, to provide for uniformity in weights and measures, and to determine standards of electrical resistance. He moreover presided over the chemical section at the Birmingham meeting in 1865. His useful invention of a ‘self-registering thermometer adapted to deep-sea soundings’ (Proc. of the Royal Society, xvii. 483) resulted from his attendance at the committee of scientific preparation for the voyage of the Porcupine, and he served from 1866 on the committee for organising meteorological observations under the board of trade. He became a member of the senate of the university of London in 1865, sat on the royal commission on scientific instruction in 1870, aided in the chemical testing of the stone employed in building the houses of parliament, and was assayer to the mint and the Bank of England. His services to the Royal Society as member of council, 1848–1850 and 1855–7, and as treasurer from 1861 until his death, were of great value. He took a prominent part in the foundation of the Chemical Society in 1841, and was twice its president. A degree of LL.D. was conferred upon him by the university of Edinburgh in 1860; he was made D.C.L. of Oxford in 1868, and LL.D. of Cambridge in 1869, when he was Rede's lecturer, ‘Coal-tar Colours’ forming the subject of his discourse.
Travelling to Liverpool for the meeting of the British Association, Miller was struck with illness resulting from brain fatigue, and died of apoplexy at Liverpool on 30 Sept. 1870. He was buried in Norwood cemetery beside his wife, who had died a year previously. He had married in 1842 Eliza, eldest daughter of Edward Forrest of Birmingham, by whom he had two daughters and one son. Miller was a man of sound and penetrating judgment. His ideas were slowly formed, but tenaciously held, and unswerving integrity was united in him with a refined and sensitive nature. On one occasion, when under cross-examination as a scientific witness in a patent case, he fainted on the judge throwing momentary doubt upon his veracity. The religious convictions, which were the mainspring of his life, obtained partial expression in an address on ‘The Bible and Science’ to the Church Congress at Wolverhampton on 3 Oct. 1867, and in an introductory lecture at King's College on 1 Oct. 1859. Miller edited Daniell's ‘Meteorological Essays’ in 1845, and his ‘Introduction to the Study of Inorganic Chemistry’ appeared posthumously in Goodeve's ‘Text-Books of Science,’ 1871.
[Proc. of the Royal Soc. vol. xix. p. xix.; Quarterly Journal of the Chemical Soc. ix. 617; Nature, ii. 517; Robinson's Reg. of Merchant Taylors' School; Ward's Men of the Reign; Poggendorff's Biog. Lit. Handwörterbuch; Royal Society's Cat. of Scientific Papers.]
MILLER, WILLIAM HALLOWES (1801–1880), mineralogist, born 6 April 1801, at Velindre, near Llandovery, was son of Captain Miller by a second marriage. The father had served in the American war, and the associations of the family were military. The son, after receiving his earlier education at private schools, proceeded to St. John's College, Cambridge, and graduated as fifth wrangler in 1826. He was elected to a college fellowship in 1829, and to the professorship of mineralogy in 1832. In accordance with the statutes he proceeded in 1841 to the degree of M.D. in order to retain his fellowship, which, however, he vacated by marriage with Harriet Susan Minty in 1844. They had two sons and four daughters, but one of the former and two of the latter died before their father.
An occasional visit to the continent, often more or less on scientific business, but sometimes extended to a holiday trip in the Eastern Alps, alone interrupted the round of Miller's daily work in his university. A diligent student and lover of science, with a memory singularly accurate and retentive, he possessed an exceptionally wide knowledge of natural philosophy; but it was in crystallography, a branch of his special science, that his great reputation was won. Starting from the groundwork already laid by Whewell and Neumann, Miller developed a system of crystallography which was far more simple, symmetrical, and adapted to mathematical calculations than any which had yet been devised. His system ‘gave expressions adapted for working all the problems that a crystal can present, and it gave them in a form that appealed at once to
