OMtuary Notices. 
Iv 
usually the best candidates who are diffident), he sent in his applica- 
tion, and w^as unanimously elected. This event changed the current 
of his life. He remained four years in the Madras College, teaching 
not only mathematics, but geography and elementary science with 
much efficiency, for the number of his pupils increased very greatly 
during his term of office. 
On the death of Professor Jackson in 1837, Mr Miller became 
a candidate for the vacant chair of natural philosophy, but 
the appointment was given to Dr Adam Anderson, who was then 
Rector of the Perth Academy. Mr Miller became Dr Anderson’s 
successor, and in October 1837 commenced his first session in 
Perth. The classes he had at first were not large, and in leaving 
St Andrews he knew he was making a heavy pecuniary sacrifice. 
The number of his pupils, however, increased considerably as time 
went on. 
During his first sessions his leisure was occupied in compiling 
courses of mathematics and natural philosophy for his students (he 
always called his pupils “ students,” addressing them individually as 
“Mr” and collectively as “Gentlemen”), and making himself acquainted 
with the progress of scientific discovery. While he was interested 
in science mainly for its own sake, and for the sake of the benefits 
which its discoveries have conferred upon mankind, he was keenly 
alive to the educational importance of its historical development, 
and familiarised his pupils with the names and the achievements of 
the great masters from Euclid downwards. For many years he 
devoted special attention to the Differential and Integral Calculus, 
and was an assiduous student of the works of Biot, Poisson, Lagrange, 
and Laplace. In 1852 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of 
Edinburgh, and in 1853 he was offered the degree of LL.D., both 
by his own University and that of Aberdeen. He chose to accept 
the St Andrews doctorate. In 1854 appeared his Treatise on the 
Differential Calculus, with its Application to Plane Curves, to Curve 
Surfaces, and to Curves of Double Curvature. A corresponding 
volume which he drew up on the Integral Calculus was never pub- 
lished, the demand for books treating of the higher mathematics 
being extremely limited, and publication entailing a serious pecuniary 
loss. Not long after he came to Perth he helped to found a 
Mechanics’ Institute, and for several years in succession delivered to 
