Due to budget constraints the offer was withdrawn, but an agreement was reached for Miller to host his own science-based TV series which was filmed at the University of Sydney where he taught. When asked how much money he wanted, he replied that he never asked, he listened to an offer then "multiplied it by a factor between two and ten". Shortly after, he was offered a job presenting science for Australia's ABC Television. I should have said: 'Australian potatoes ain't worth a damn', and I'd have cornered the potato market!" He later stated "I sat amongst the straws with straws stuck in my hair and ears.
The next morning, Miller arrived at his Sydney University laboratory to find one million drinking straws on the floor with a telegram reading "You might find one of these fitting your requirements". For the first time in his career he could not get this to work, and he loudly exclaimed "Australian straws ain't worth a damn!".
A paper straw normally does not have sufficient strength but if one pinches the end, the trapped air acts as a piston, easily piercing the potato. In an improvised physics demonstration, he attempted to drive a drinking straw through a raw potato. Miller's first television appearance in Australia was on Bob Sanders People in 1963. Eventually, he also had his own TV shows in Australia, Canada, Norway, and New Zealand. During the same period, he appeared on a semi-regular basis performing physics experiments, on Steve Allen's late night TV show in Hollywood, syndicated by Group W. He also starred in the Disney series Great Moments in Science and Science and its Magic. From 1962 to 1964, Miller was Disney's "Professor Wonderful" on new introductions, filmed at Disneyland, to the syndicated reruns of The Mickey Mouse Club. In 1959, Miller began hosting his educational program, Why Is It So? on KNXT Channel 2 in Los Angeles. įrom 1963 to 1986, Miller was the visiting lecturer for the Physics Department of the University of Sydney, and from 1965 to 1985 at the US Air Force Academy. Schools have abandoned integrity and rigor. We don't have academic honesty or intellectual rigor. Boys and girls are emerging from every level of school with certificates and degrees, but they can't read, write or calculate. We are approaching a darkness in the land. During an interview in the 1940s, he stated that intellectual life in America was in trouble, a belief he held for the rest of his life. Miller was intolerant of misspelled words and misplaced punctuation, and often angered his colleagues because he charged that the students of most faculty were not learning enough. In 1952 Miller joined the Physics Department at the then small El Camino College in Torrance, California (1952–1974), to maximum student enrollments due to his great popularity and where he was instantly recognizable by his casual hair and horn-rimmed eyeglasses. He greatly admired Einstein and went on to amass a collection of Einstein memorabilia that included Einstein's birth certificate. In 1950, he won a Carnegie Grant that allowed him to visit Albert Einstein at his home in Princeton, New Jersey, and also to visit the Institute for Advanced Studies. He was a Ford Foundation Fellow at University of California, Los Angeles. During World War II he worked as a civilian physicist for the US Army Signal Corps while holding fellowships in physics at the universities of Idaho and Oklahoma. Īfter submitting over 700 job applications, he was offered a place in 1937 in the Physics Department of Dillard University, a private, African American liberal arts college in New Orleans.
They had no children, but he was to reach millions of children through his popular science programs. He married the doctor's maid, Alice Brown. Due to the Great Depression, he worked as a butler for a wealthy Boston doctor for the next two years. Miller graduated with a Master's degree in physics from Boston University in 1933. His father was Latvian, and his Lithuanian mother spoke 12 languages. Julius Sumner Miller was born in Billerica, Massachusetts, as the youngest of nine children. He is best known for his work on children's television programs in North America and Australia. Julius Sumner Miller (May 17, 1909 – April 14, 1987) was an United States physicist and television personality.
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