Biography
Miller was born on February 3, 1920, at Charleston, West Virginia, the son of an executive at a steel company, George E. Miller, and Florence (Armitage) Miller. Soon after, his parents divorced. He grew up with his mother during the Great Depression, attended public school, and graduated from Charleston High School in 1937. He relocated with his mother and stepfather to Washington D.C., and was at George Washington University for a year. His family believed in Christian Science, which turned to prayer, rather than medical science, for healing. After his stepfather was transferred to Birmingham, Alabama, Miller transferred to the University of Alabama.
He received his bachelor's degree in history and speech in 1940, and a master's in speech in 1941 from the University of Alabama. He had taken courses in phonetics, voice science, and speech pathology . Membership in the Drama club fostered his interest in courses in the Speech Department. He was also influenced by Professor Donald Ramsdell, who introduced him both to psychology, and, indirectly through a seminar, to his future wife Katherine James. They married on November 29, 1939. Katherine died in January, 1996. He married Margaret Ferguson Skutch Page in 2008.
Miller taught "Introduction to Psychology" at Alabama for two years. He enrolled in the Ph.D. program in psychology at Harvard University in 1943, after coming to the university in 1942. He received his doctorate in 1946 from Harvard's Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory, under the supervision of Stanley Smith Stevens, researching military voice communications for the Army Signal Corps during World War II. His doctorate thesis, "The Optimal Design of Jamming Signals," was classified top secret by the US Army. He was on the faculty at Harvard, MIT and Rockefeller University before settling at Princeton in 1979.
In his later years, Miller enjoyed playing golf. He died in 2012 at his home in Plainsboro, New Jersey of complications of pneumonia and dementia. He is survived by his wife Margaret; the children from his first marriage: son Donnally James and daughter Nancy Saunders;two stepsons, David Skutch and Christopher Skutch; and three grandchildren: Gavin Murray-Miller, Morgan Murray-Miller and Nathaniel James Miller.
Read more about this topic: George Armitage Miller
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