William Allen Miller

Biography

William Allen Miller combined a chemist’s exactitude with an astronomer’s ambition, pioneering efforts in spectroscopy that helped translate the secrets of starlight into chemical language. As a professor he brought pupils into laboratories where diffraction gratings revealed the Sun’s composition, cementing his place among the century's most inventive scientists.

He remained active in London scientific societies until illness claimed him, and his West Norwood grave marks the resting place of the scholar who sought to read the heavens through the prism of chemistry.