![]() We are approaching a darkness in the land. During an interview in the 1940s, he stated that intellectual life in America was in trouble, a belief he held for the rest of his life. Miller was intolerant of misspelled words and misplaced punctuation, and often angered his colleagues because he charged that the students of most faculties were not learning enough. In 1952, he 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. He greatly admired Einstein and went on to amass a collection of Einstein memorabilia. In 1950, Miller 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 Study. He was a Ford Foundation fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles. 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. In 1937, after submitting over 700 job applications, he was offered a place in the physics department of Dillard University, a private, African American liberal arts college in New Orleans. They had no children, but he was able to reach millions of children through his popular science programs. ![]() ![]() Due to the Great Depression, he and his wife Alice (née Brown) worked as a butler and maid for a wealthy Boston doctor for the following two years. Miller graduated with a master's degree in physics from Boston University in 1933. His father was Latvian and his Lithuanian mother spoke 12 languages. Julius Sumner Miller was born in Billerica, Massachusetts, as the youngest of nine children. He is best known for his work on children's television programs in North America and Australia. "The hope I have here is simply summed up: To stir your imagination, awaken your interest, arouse your curiosity, enliven your spirit - all with the purpose of bringing you to ask, as young Maxwell put it, "What's the go of it?" - or, as Kepler had it, "why things are as they are and not otherwise".Julius Sumner Miller (– April 14, 1987) was an American physicist and television personality. To finish up, who better than the man himself, who gave this bold goal in the preface to a book of Q & A's, Millergrams which were taken from The Australian's questions. ![]() The Professor was in high demand across the globe, appearing in Australia 26 times, and eventually having a question posted everyday in The Australian newspaper in 1966. Working on the family farm for seventeen years, Julius grew to be keenly interested in the natural world, and decided to then move on to become a physics graduate.ĭuring the depression, positions for physics graduates were in a bit of a skinny patch, so he worked as a servant in a doctor's residence for a couple of years, before taking a position at a Dillard University.įrom there it was up and up for the young Sumner Miller, as he started making the Why is it so? series for broadcast - gaining much positive response from the public and much outcry from academics. In 1909, Julius Sumner Miller was the ninth born child of two East European parents who had immigrated to the United States. By throwing himself so animatedly into his work, and by making a point of trying not to answer questions, he provoked scientific thought in the general community in a way that hadn't been done before. By ditching the maths, 'Big Julie' (as he was called by his Producer, Bev Gledhill) came up with a formula everyone could agree with - cool experiments, interesting science, and fantastic hair - a winner all round!įew could doubt the enthusiasm of the man, as he darted around the studio from experiment to experiment, telling his guests and the audience at home about how wondrous and unique each experiment was. Through these experiments, he tried to show "how Nature behaves without cluttering its beauty with abstruse mathematics". The Why is it so? series, which aired between 19, brought science an element that had not been seen before - fun! The Professor was amazingly enthusiastic about his work - an enthusiasm that ensured thousands of Australians can recall fondly watching as he made patterns in the sand, lit neon tubes without power cords and generally made sparks fly!ĭuring the Why is it so? series, Sumner Miller showed hundreds of experiments, set up by his assistant Mr Anderson. For over two decades, the enigmatic and slightly mad Professor Julius Sumner Miller captivated and amazed audiences on Australian TV with demonstrations of physical science.
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