![]() He was in Australia in February-where he was to deliver the manuscript of his autobiography to a publisher-when he became ill and returned to the United States. He sent a cable of regret, saying, “I’ve dropped dead here.” He was said to have been in good health until last fall, when he had another heart attack. Miller had an almost-fatal heart attack in 1964, when he was scheduled to lecture in Australia. Schools have abandoned integrity and rigor.” We don’t have academic honesty or intellectual rigor. ![]() Boys and girls are emerging from every level of school with certificates and degrees, but they can’t read, write or calculate. “We are approaching a darkness in the land. More than a decade ago, he told another interviewer that intellectual life in America was in trouble, and he never changed his mind. ![]() Miller also sometimes angered his colleagues because he charged that most faculty were not rigid enough and that students were not learning enough. Miller taught for a time at UCLA but opted for the then small junior college that was El Camino in 1952 because he did not want to be in a big, remote institution.Ĭolleagues recall that Miller could be a terror in the classroom, intolerant of misspelled words or misplaced punctuation. Miller amassed a collection of Einstein memorabilia that included a copy of Einstein’s birth certificate. The most important intellectual association of his life was formed in 1950, when he went to the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, N.J., and became a student and friend of Albert Einstein, his idol. Army Signal Corps civilian physicist during World War II, held fellowships in physics at the universities of Idaho and Oklahoma and was a Ford Foundation Fellow at UCLA. He wrote 700 letters before he landed his first teaching job, at a private school in Connecticut. ![]() It was the Depression and, failing to land a teaching job, he and the woman who was to become his wife of 52 years became butler and maid for a wealthy Boston doctor, earning $30 a month. He left Boston University with degrees in philosophy and theoretical physics. He had some of his greatest successes in Australia, which he visited more than 20 times, lecturing to large audiences, doing television and even posing for splashy Cadbury chocolate ads.īorn in Billerica, Mass., Miller grew up in a hard-working farming family and once said he learned the rigors of precise, disciplined thinking from his teachers and his mother, whom he described as “a Lithuanian peasant who spoke 12 languages.” By the time he was 16, Miller said, he had “read the (town) library dry.” ![]() He also appeared on television with such late-night stars as Steve Allen and Johnny Carson, wrote eight books and published more than 300 papers in professional journals.Īctive around the world even after his official retirement at age 65, Miller gave thousands of lectures inside and outside the classroom and made hundreds of television appearances. Dressed in a dark coat and open-collared white shirt, Miller made 40 appearances on Walt Disney’s “Mickey Mouse Club” and also did a children’s record series for Disney on history’s great scientists. ![]()
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