Thomas Richard Miles

Who was Thomas Richard Miles?

Thomas Richard Miles, T. R. Miles, more usually Tim Miles, was Emeritus professor of psychology at Bangor University.

His research career was devoted to the study of developmental dyslexia as a constitutional disorder, likely to be "a form of aphasia", to the recognition that children with dyslexia have special education needs and that there should be a statutory obligation of schools to meet these, and, with his wife Elaine, to the development and evaluation of teaching methods to provide such support.

One of the first students in the institute of experimental psychology at Oxford University, he was much influenced by the eminent experimental psychologist Oliver Zangwill. His first lectureship was at University College of North Wales, Bangor in the departments of education and philosophy in 1949. He was appointed as the first professor of the new Department of Psychology at Bangor in 1963. He was a founder member of the British Dyslexia Association in 1972, and served as one of its vice-presidents. In 1974 he founded the Bangor Dyslexia Unit to recruit teachers, to train them in multi-sensory methods of training, and to organise their work in the community, in collaboration with Gwynedd and Anglesey Local Education Authorities.