The man for whom physics was his business.

In the late 1960s, Sydney University hosted a series of television programs that taught physics. These 'classes' were instructed by a curiously animated man. Professor Julius Sumner Miller was a professor of Physics from El Camino Colledge, California. With his New England accent and a distinctly energetic approach towards his passion of science, he managed to communicate and educate many practical concepts of the laws of physics to people all over the world. With thanks due to the Public Broadcasting System, this man's curious and admittedy geeky approach has enlightened and entertained thousands.

All in all he was involved in three television shows in his lifetime. Professor Miller's "Demonstrations in Physics" was first produced and broadcast in Australia in the 1960s. Before that he appeared on The Mickey Mouse Club as Professor Wonderful. His tenure with Disney was from 1955 to 1959. Finally, in 1971 Miller starred in the TV series "The Hilarious House of Frightenstein" as simply "The Professor." In his science program, each week he would tackle a new scientific problem, with the assistance of meticulous and melodramatic presentations of lab experiments. Using chalkboards and beakers and bunsen burners and more props than Gallagher's comedy routine, Professor Julius Sumner Miller would explain complex concepts in ways any old Joe could comprehend. He is perhaps the epitome and modern stereotype of a corny screwball scientist. Though eccentric, he was also human, and was able to transcend through all the muck and bull of scientific jargon, and sell physics to you straight.

Miller was born at Billerica, Massachusets in 1909. By the age of sixteen he claimed to have read everything at the local library. He graduated during The Great Depression and was unable to find a job as a physics professor for some time, until he was hired by a private school in Connecticut. He studied under the tutelage of Albert Einstein. Throughout his life he worked for several different schools, and spread his knowledge throughout the planet. Unfortunately, Professor Miller passed away April 14th 1987 in San Jose, California of leukemia. However, he willed his body to the University of Southern California School of Dentistry. Hey. I ain't makin' this stuff up. It's on the Web so it must be true!

Sydney University now has a gentleman named Dr Karl Kruszelnicki who is credited with being their Inaugural Julius Sumner Miller Fellow. This prestigious title goes to the one who inherited Miller's position at the University, and Kruszelnicki continues on in the tradition of answering simple mysteries of the universe through scientific exploration. He goes around to schools all over the continent, teaching young people of all walks of life, expanding their minds and enriching their future.

"And I thank you for listening to this adventure, and we shall return another day." - Professor Julius Sumner Miller
Professor Julius Sumner Miller also appeared in a number of television commercials in the eighties for Cadbury chocolate. He was somehow miraculously able to find a connection between almost any law of physics and the glass and a half of milk that goes into Cadbury chocolates.

One particular commercial that I recall as a kid involved him placing a burning piece of paper into a milk bottle. He then placed a hard boiled egg on top of the bottle, which of course, pops into the bottle. The ecstatic professor then exclaimed,

"So too, a glass and a half of full cream dairy milk, in every two hundred gram block of Cadbury chocolate."

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