Jeffrey Charles Percy Miller (31 August 1906 – 24 April 1981) was an

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

and computing pioneer. He worked in

number theory Number theory (or arithmetic or higher arithmetic in older usage) is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and arithmetic function, integer-valued functions. German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777� ...

and on

geometry Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is c ...

, particularly

polyhedra In geometry, a polyhedron (plural polyhedra or polyhedrons; ) is a three-dimensional shape with flat polygonal faces, straight edges and sharp corners or vertices. A convex polyhedron is the convex hull of finitely many points, not all on t ...

, where Miller's monster refers to the

great dirhombicosidodecahedron In geometry, the great dirhombicosidodecahedron (or great snub disicosidisdodecahedron) is a nonconvex uniform polyhedron, indexed last as . It has 124 faces (40 triangles, 60 squares, and 24 pentagrams), 240 edges, and 60 vertices. This is ...

. He was an early member of the Computing Laboratory of the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

. He contributed in computation to the construction and documentation of mathematical tables, and by the proposal of certain

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specificat ...

s. Miller's recurrence algorithm is mentioned in the '' Handbook of Mathematical Functions''. As the reference says, this technique was subsequently much developed and applied, and was enunciated rather casually by Miller in a 1952 book of tables of

Bessel function Bessel functions, first defined by the mathematician Daniel Bernoulli and then generalized by Friedrich Bessel, are canonical solutions of Bessel's differential equation x^2 \frac + x \frac + \left(x^2 - \alpha^2 \right)y = 0 for an arbitrary ...

s. In volume 2 of ''

The Art of Computer Programming ''The Art of Computer Programming'' (''TAOCP'') is a comprehensive monograph written by the computer scientist Donald Knuth presenting programming algorithms and their analysis. Volumes 1–5 are intended to represent the central core of compu ...

'',

Donald Knuth Donald Ervin Knuth ( ; born January 10, 1938) is an American computer scientist, mathematician, and professor emeritus at Stanford University. He is the 1974 recipient of the ACM Turing Award, informally considered the Nobel Prize of computer sc ...

attributes to Miller a basic technique on

formal power series In mathematics, a formal series is an infinite sum that is considered independently from any notion of convergence, and can be manipulated with the usual algebraic operations on series (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, partial sum ...

, for recursive evaluation of coefficients of powers or more general functions. In the theory of

stellation In geometry, stellation is the process of extending a polygon in two dimensions, polyhedron in three dimensions, or, in general, a polytope in ''n'' dimensions to form a new figure. Starting with an original figure, the process extends specific el ...

of polyhedra, he made some influential suggestions to

H. S. M. Coxeter Harold Scott MacDonald "Donald" Coxeter, (9 February 1907 – 31 March 2003) was a British and later also Canadian geometer. He is regarded as one of the greatest geometers of the 20th century. Biography Coxeter was born in Kensington t ...

. These became known as ''Miller's rules''. The 1938 book on

the fifty-nine icosahedra ''The Fifty-Nine Icosahedra'' is a book written and illustrated by Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter, H. S. M. Coxeter, Patrick du Val, P. Du Val, H. T. Flather and J. F. Petrie. It enumerates certain stellations of the regular convex or Platonic re ...

resulted, written by Coxeter and

Patrick du Val Patrick du Val (March 26, 1903 – January 22, 1987) was a British mathematician, known for his work on algebraic geometry, differential geometry, and general relativity. The concept of Du Val singularity of an algebraic surface is named afte ...

. In the 1930s, Coxeter and Miller found 12 new

uniform polyhedra In geometry, a uniform polyhedron has regular polygons as faces and is vertex-transitive (i.e., there is an isometry mapping any vertex onto any other). It follows that all vertices are congruent. Uniform polyhedra may be regular (if also fa ...

, a step in the process of their complete classification in the 1950s. Miller also made an early investigation into what is now known as the

Rule 90 In the mathematics, mathematical study of cellular automaton, cellular automata, Rule 90 is an elementary cellular automaton based on the exclusive or function. It consists of a one-dimensional array of cells, each of which can hold either a 0 or ...

cellular automaton A cellular automaton (pl. cellular automata, abbrev. CA) is a discrete model of computation studied in automata theory. Cellular automata are also called cellular spaces, tessellation automata, homogeneous structures, cellular structures, tessel ...

.. Dr Miller was married to Germaine Miller (née Gough) in 1934 and had three children (David, Alison and Jane). Germaine died in Cambridge in her 100th year in March 2010 and is buried at

St Andrew's Church, Chesterton St Andrew's Church, Chesterton is a Church of England parish church in Chesterton, Cambridge. It is a Grade I listed building. A church was first recorded on this site around 1200. The church was presented in 1217 to the papal legate, Cardinal ...

, Cambridge.

Notes

Further reading