Jacques Miller
| Jacques Miller AC FRS FAA | |
|---|---|
| Born | Jacques Francis Albert Pierre Meunier 2 April 1931 Nice, France |
| Citizenship |
 Australia
|
| Fields | Immunology |
| Institutions | The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Melbourne |
| Alma mater | The University of Sydney |
| Known for | Discoveries of the function of the thymus and the T cell and B cell subsets of mammalian lymphocytes |
| Influences |
Ludwik Gross; Sir Gustav Nossal |
| Notable awards | Gairdner Foundation International Award (1966) |
Jacques Francis Albert Pierre Miller AC FRS FAA (born 2 April 1931) is a distinguished research scientist. He is famous for having discovered the function of the thymus and for the identification, in mammalian species of the two major subsets of lymphocytes (T cells and B cells) and their function.
Miller was born on 2 April 1931 in Nice, France, as J.F.A.P. Meunier, and grew up in France, Switzerland and China, mostly in Shanghai. After the outbreak of World War II, in anticipation of Japan's entry into the war, his family moved in 1941 to Sydney, Australia, and changed their last name to "Miller". He was educated at St Aloysius' College in Sydney, where he met his future colleague, Sir Gustav Nossal.
Miller studied medicine at the University of Sydney, and had his first experience of laboratory research in the laboratory of Professor Patrick de Burgh where he studied virus infection.
In 1958, Miller travelled to the United Kingdom on a Gaggin Research Fellowship from the University of Queensland. He was accepted to the Chester Beatty Research Institute of Cancer Research (part of the Institute of Cancer Research, London) and as a PhD student at the University of London. Miller chose to study the pathogenesis of lymphocytic leukemia in mice, expanding on the research of Ludwik Gross into murine leukemia virus. Miller showed that experimental animals without a thymus at birth were incapable of rejecting foreign tissues and resisting many infections, thus demonstrating that the thymus is vital for development and function of the adaptive immune system. Prior to this, the thymus was believed to be a vestigial organ with no function. His discovery has led many to describe Miller as the "world's only living person who can claim to have been the first to have described the functions of a human organ". In 1963, Miller continued his work into the function of the thymus at the National Institutes of Health.
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