ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OE THE PRESIDENT. 



45 



dence. The associations of the family were military, his father 

 having served through a part of the American war, by which he 

 had been a heavy loser, and other relatives having held commissions 

 and obtained distinction in the British army. W. H. Miller was 

 educated at private schools, and afterwards entered as a student 

 at St. John's College, Cambridge, graduating in the year 1826, 

 when he was fifth among the Wranglers in the Mathematical Tripos. 

 In 1829 he was elected to a Fellowship at his College, and sub- 

 sequently proceeded to the degrees, first of M.A., and afterwards 

 (in compliance with the statutes by which it was then governed) 

 of M.D. Tor some time he filled the office of a College Tutor ; 

 and his first literary work was a 'Treatise on Hydrostatics,' published 

 in 1831, and followed a few years subsequently by one on Hydro- 

 dynamics. At this time the chair of Mineralogy at Cambridge 

 was occupied by Dr. Whewell ; and under his guidance Mr. Miller 

 devoted himself to the study of Crystallography, with so much 

 success that, on the resignation of Dr. Whewell, he was elected to 

 the Professorship, the duties of which became the chief work of 

 his long and arduous life. In 1830 he was elected a Fellow of our 

 Society, and in 1838 a Fellow of the Eoyal Society. Six years 

 afterwards he vacated, by marriage, his Fellowship at St. John's 

 College; but in 1874 he was again elected under the statute 

 (granted in 1860) empowering that Society to elect as Fellows 

 persons eminent for science or learning, though otherwise techni- 

 cally disqualified. Not long after this his health began to fail ; 

 and in the autumn of 1876 a course of lectures, which he had 

 announced, was interrupted by a slight stroke of paralysis. This 

 proved the beginning of the end. He was never able to meet his 

 class again. Very slowly, but surely, his vital powers declined, a 

 torpor stealing alike over body and mind, until at last he fell 

 asleep on the 20th May, 1880. 



Professor Miller's name is inseparably connected with two im- 

 portant branches of scientific work. The first of these belongs, as 

 might be expected, to mineralogy. " Crystallography," as has 

 been said by Professor Maskelyne, " was Miller's science.'' Other 

 workers, indeed, had preceded him in laying the foundation and 

 contributing important materials ; but Professor Miller, " taking 

 the important memoir by Professor Whewell ' On the Geometrical 

 Treatment of Crystal Forms ' (published in the 'Transactions of 

 the Cambridge Philosophical Society '), and JNTaumann's treatise of 

 1823 (' Beitrage zur Krystallonomie ') as his starting-point, pro- 

 ceeded to develop a system of crystallography, which was not pub- 

 lished till 1838, but which was the most important work of his 

 life." The especial feature of this book and of his labours in this 

 science " consisted in working out into a beautiful system the 

 indicial method of notation and calculation in crystallography, 

 and obtaining expressions adapted for logarithmic calculations by 

 processes of great elegance and simplicity. Miller's system, then, 

 gave expressions for working all the problems that a crystal can 

 present ; and it gave them in a form that appealed at once to the 



