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[ Biographical Sketch ]
John M. Miller, Ph.D. is a native North Dakotan from immigrant German-Ukrainian and Danish-Norwegian families. John moved to southern California at an early age after spending a summer at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. The summer of 1959 was important to John as it sparked a keen interest in geology and mountains, which contributed mental energy and curiosity needed while climbing two 4,000 meter peaks in the Sierra Nevada of North America in the early 1970's, including Mount Goddard (4,136 m), and a solo ascent of Split Mountain (4,285 m).
Dr. Miller is a botanist with nearly three decades of experience. John was a student of Humboldt State University professors of the early 1970's, graduating in 1973. He earned a Baccalaureate Degree two years after transferring to Humboldt State from Moorpark Community College. John's interest in plant taxonomy was sparked by the late Clinton Schoenberger, Biology Chair at Moorpark; where he shared his first botany class with Dr. Allen Cattell (A.K.A. "the dinoflagellate").
In April of 1973, Professor Ken Chambers invited John to the herbarium at Oregon State University (OSU) which later admitted him into the graduate program. As an OSU Beaver, John broadened his interests to include studies in biochemistry, evolution, paleobotany (crossing paths with Dr. Steven Manchester), plant physiology, and systematic botany, in the departments of Botany and Plant Pathology and Biochemistry. He earned a master's degree in 1975 and a doctorate degree in 1978, majoring in systematic botany (with a graduate minor in biochemistry and plant physiology). His theses focused on the biology, chemotaxonomy, cytotaxonomy, and systematics of miner's lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata).
John was invited by Professor Bruce Bohm in 1978 to join the Department of Botany, University of British Columbia (UBC) as a Post-doctoral Fellow, where he spent 1978 and 1979 in Bruce's laboratory working on the flavonoid chemistry of Arctic saxifrages.
In the summer of 1979, John moved from British Columbia to Texas at the invitation of Mike Powell to join his biology staff at Sul Ross State University, and to establish a phytochemical laboratory at "Old Sully." John won his first National Science Foundation Grant at Sul Ross to study chromosomes, geobotany, and rubber chemistry of guayule (Parthenium argentatum). While in west Texas Dr. Miller nurtured his interests in paleobotany (becoming friends with the late Professor Maxine Abbott), and phytochemistry, while becoming popular with biology and geology students who vividly recall field trips with him to the Big Bend country and northern Mexico. John and his ex spouse, Sandra were neighbors of the late Professor Barton Warnock.
John joined the faculty of the School of Pure and Applied Sciences, the University of the South Pacific (USP) in 1985. At USP, John won funding from the National Geographic Society and Australia and Pacific Science Foundation to study the basic biology of primitive flowering plants of the family Degeneriaceae and phytochemistry of the bud exudates of native Fijian gardenias. He helped establish a botanical garden on the USP campus.
In 1988, Miller returned to the United States, conducted field studies in the Alaskan White and Talkeetna Mountains, and spent the next decade gathering notes and writing a monograph of Claytonia with his major professor.
John, who resides in the San Francisco Bay area, has sired two children, Chris and Melissa, both recent graduates of OSU. Biographic information on John may be sought from the Hunt Center for Botanical Documentation, the World Taxonomist Database at the Expert Center for Taxonomic Identification, and from the International Palaeontological Association.
The kodachrome to the left is the eastern enscarpment of the Sierra San Pedro Martir. The massif in the center of the slide is Cerro Providencia (Pichaco del Diablo), a 3,000 meter peak of the Peninsular Mountains, Baja California Norte, Mexico (photographed by the writer).
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Biographical Sketch
