MILLER, WILLIAM ALLEN

(b. Ipswich, England, 17 December 1817; d. Liverpool, England, 30 September 1870).

chemistry, spectroscopy, astronomy.

A writer of widely used textbooks on chemistry, Miller pioneered the use of spectroscopic analysis in chemistry and the application to it of photography. With Huggins he subsequently extended his studies to planetary and stellar spectra, making comparisons with terrestrial sources, and was one of the first to produce reliable information as to the chemical constitution of the stars.

Miller was the son of Frances (née Bowyer) and William Miller, who after being secretary to the Birmingham General Hospital became a brewer in the Borough, London. After a year at Merchant Taylors’ School, Northwood, Middlesex Miller was sent to a Quaker school at Ackworth, Yorkshire. There he was taught by William Allen, after whom he had been named and who introduced him to chemistry and astronomy.

In 1832 Miller was apprenticed to his uncle, Bowyer Vaux, a surgeon at the Birmingham General Hospital; he left in 1837 to read medicine at King’s College, London. In 1839 Miller received the Warneford Prize in theology and in 1840 was made demonstrator of chemistry after having spent some months in Liebig’s laboratory at Giessen. He took his M.B. and M.D. in 1841–1842 and in 1841 became assistant lecturer under J. F. Daniell, whom he succeeded as professor of chemistry in 1845. He was made a fellow of the Royal Society in the latter year.

Miller’s lecture notes formed the basis of his well-known textbooks of inorganic and organic chemistry, which went into many editions. His first important and original paper, “Additional Researches on the Electrolysis of Secondary Compounds,” was written jointly with Daniell (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 134 [1844], 1–19; Philosophical Magazine, 25 [1844], 175–188). It was well known that the passage of a current through an electrolyte yelded decomposition products at the electrodes and also resulted in changes of concentration of the solution at different points in relation to the cathodes. Faraday had investigated the subject in 1835, but it was left to Daniell and Miller to propose an explanation in terms of a discrepancy between the mobilities of cation and anion, movement of the latter often being much the greater. Their hypothesis was more fully exploited by Hittorf (from 1853) and later by F. W. Kohlrausch (from 1876), whose theory of ionic movement is substantially that taught at an elementary level today.

During the 1840’s it was slowly becoming appreciated that the spectra of flames were far from simple; Miller was perhaps the first to publish drawings of flame and absorption spectra, which he observed in a makeshift, laboratory under the King’s College lecture theater. He presented his findings to the Cambridge meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1845, and they were printed in Philosophical Magazine (27 [1845], 81–91). He drew the spectra of calcium, copper, and barium chlorides, boric acid, and strontium nitrate, each having bright lines and bands, and the common yellow D-line of sodium. The ubiquity of the D-line, and the newly found complexity in spectral structure, led some chemists almost to despair of ever laying down rigid rules of chemical spectrum analysis.

In 1861, before the Manchester meeting of the British Association, and 1862, before the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, Miller gave another address with far-reaching consequences for spectroscopy. Rather than use a fluorescent screen for the study of the ultraviolet spectra of metals, he photographed them. 1 his made it possible to record accurately the extraordinary complexity of the spectra. He was now able to find similarities between the characteristic spectra of certain metals, such as the cadmium, zinc, and magnesium group. His photographic plates were wet collodion, and his prisms were quartz. In all, he published spectra of twenty-five metals (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 152 [1862] 861–887).

In 1862 Miller joined forces with William Huggins, his neighbor at Tulse Hill, London, and together they arranged a telescope to give the spectra of celestial objects side by side with a comparison spectrum from a laboratory source. In Italy, Pietro Secchi was making a very extensive survey and in due course classified the spectra of more than 4,000 stars. Miller and Huggins, however, aimed at a smaller survey but one made with much greater precision. In March 1863, Miller was able to show a fine spectrophotograph of Sirius to an audience at the Royal Institution. He and Huggins paid especial attention to the spectra of the moon, Jupiter, and Mars. In 1867 they were jointly awarded the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society for their work (for a report of which see Proceedings of the Royal Society, 12 [1862–1863], 444–445; Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 154 [1864], 413–436). Other examples of their work on fixed stars can be found in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (26 [1866], 215–218) and Proceedings of the Royal Society (15 [1867], 146–149). Their general conclusion was that although stars differ considerably one from another, they all have much chemically in common with the sun.

Miller was a deeply religious man and was indefatigable in applying his scientific talents to social ends, whether advising on the chemistry of the Metropolitan water supply, on the uniformity of weights and measures, on the establishment of regular meteorological observations (under the Board of Trade), or on the a affairs of the Royal Mint, where he was Assayer. He worked hard for the Royal Society, of which he was treasurer for nine years, and helped to found the Chemical Society, of which he was twice president. He married Eliza Forrest in 1842. She died a year before him, and two daughters and a son survived them both.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. For papers in addition to those mentioned in the text, see the Royal Society’s Catalogue of Scientific Papers. IV (1870), 390, and VIII (1879), 406–407. Miller’s longer works include On the Importance of Chemistry to Medicine (London, 1845); Report…in Reference to the Composition of the Lambeth Stone Ware and Aylesford Pottery Pipes(London, 1855); Elements of Chemistry Theoretical and Practical, 3 vols. (London, 1855; 6th ed., 1877–1878); Practical Hints to the Medical Student (London, 1867); and Introduction to the Study of Inorganic Chemistry (London, 1871).

II. Secondary Literature. For further details of Miller’s public life, see Agnes Clerke’s notice on him in the Dictionary of National Biography. XIII, 429–430 and the first three obituaries listed there. See especially Proceedings of the Royal Society. 19 (1871), xix-xxvi. In most histories of spectroscopy Miller is given only slight attention. For the background to his work, see W. McGucen, Nineteenth-Century Spectroscopy (Baltimore, 1969).

J. D. North