William Allen Miller

Who was William Allen Miller?

William Allen Miller FRS was a British scientist.

He was born in Ipswich, Suffolk and educated at Ackworth School and King's College London.

On the death of John Frederic Daniell he succeeded to the Chair of Chemistry at King's. Although primarily a chemist, the scientific contributions for which Miller is mainly remembered today are in spectroscopy and astrochemistry, new fields in his time.

Miller won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1867 jointly with William Huggins, for their spectroscopic study of the composition of stars. In 1845, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.

According to his obituary, Miller married Eliza Forrest of Birmingham in 1842. He died in 1870, a year after his wife, and they are both buried at West Norwood Cemetery. They were survived by a son and two daughters.

The crater Miller on the Moon is named after him.