William H. Miller
About Optica
In Memoriam: William H. Miller, 1926 - 2018
13 August 2018
William H. Miller, Optica Fellow (1975) and recipient of the Proctor Medal, passed away on 13 August 2018 in Woodbridge, Connecticut, at the age of 92. He was known for investigating small structures in optics with respect to light wavelengths, particularly in insects and arthropods, and the role of the cyclic nucleotide cascade in phototransduction. His research included seminal discoveries in the molecular basis of vision.
Miller was born on 7 August 1926 in Baltimore, Maryland. He went to Haverford College and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1948 after serving in the navy during World War II. He then went on to Johns Hopkins Medical School and graduated in 1954. After his studies, Miller worked under Nobel Laureate H.K. Hartline and Floyd Ratliff at the Rockefeller University. Miller’s micrograph of a slice through the retina of a horseshoe crab would contribute to the Hartline-Ratliff model, which presented an accurate quantitative solution of a living neural network.
In 1964, Miller moved to New Haven where he became Professor of Medicine at Yale University’s School of Medicine in the Department of Physiology. He published more than a hundred scientific papers in publications such as Nature, Science, and the Journal of the Optical Society of America (JOSA) s. In 1990, Miller was honored with the Proctor Medal from the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology. The Proctor Medal honors outstanding research in the basic or clinical sciences as applied to ophthalmology.
Outside of optics, Miller loved poetry and literature. He is survived by his sister Patsy, his spouse Irene, and his children Karen, Lori and Benjamin.
Optica and the scientific community mourn the loss of William H. Miller.
