Julius Sumner Miller
| Julius Sumner Miller | |
|---|---|
| Born |
May 17, 1909 Billerica, Massachusetts |
| Died | April 14, 1987 (aged 77) Torrance, California |
| Fields | Physics education |
| Alma mater | Boston University |
| Known for | Children's television |
| Influences | Albert Einstein |
Julius Sumner Miller (May 17, 1909 – April 14, 1987) was an American physicist and television personality. He is best known for his work on children's television programs in North America and Australia.
Julius Sumner Miller was born in Billerica, Massachusetts, as the youngest of nine children. His father was Latvian, his Lithuanian mother spoke 12 languages.
Miller graduated with a Master's degree and a PhD in physics from Boston University in 1933. Due to the Great Depression, he worked as a butler for a wealthy Boston doctor for the next two years. He married the doctor's maid, Alice Brown; they had no children, but he was to reach millions of children through his popular science programs.
After making over 700 job applications, he was offered a place in 1937 in the Physics Department of Dillard University, a private, African American liberal arts college in New Orleans. During World War II he worked as a civilian physicist for the US Army Signal Corps while holding fellowships in physics at the universities of Idaho and Oklahoma. He was a Ford Foundation Fellow at University of California, Los Angeles.
In 1950, he won a Carnegie Grant that allowed him to visit Albert Einstein at his home in Princeton, New Jersey, and also to visit the Institute for Advanced Studies. He greatly admired Einstein and went on to amass a collection of Einstein memorabilia that included Einstein's birth certificate. In 1952 Miller joined the Physics Department at the then small El Camino College in Torrance, California (1952–1974), to maximum student enrollments due to his great popularity and where he was instantly recognizable by his casual hair and horn-rimmed eyeglasses.
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