IN MEMORIAM

IN MEMORIAM

Malcolm R. Miller, M.D., Ph.D.

Professor of Anatomy, Emeritus

San Francisco

1915—2002

Malcolm R. Miller, professor emeritus of anatomy at UCSF, died on Wednesday, June 12, 2002, following a stroke at his home in Kentfield. He was 86 years old. Dr. Miller taught human anatomy and microscopic anatomy to several generations of UCSF medical students between 1958 and 1985, when he became an emeritus faculty member. He also supervised the research of more than a dozen graduate students and medical students.

 

Dr. Miller had an international reputation for his studies of the organization of the vertebrate cochlea. His research model was the cochlea of the lizard, as this structure is straight in the lizard, and not coiled as is the case with mammalian cochleas. His many scientific publications contributed substantially to our understanding of the complex anatomy of this auditory receptor, and resulted in many years of funding support from the National Institutes of Health, as well as his being awarded two Guggenheim Research Fellowships and a Fulbright Scholarship.

 

Dr. Miller was born in Salt Lake City on December 31, 1915. He grew up in Seattle and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in science from the University of Washington in 1937. His subsequent studies led him to Harvard University where he received a master’s degree in biological science in 1939, a Ph.D. in zoology from UCLA in 1942 and an M.D. from UCSF in 1945. During the late 1940s, Dr. Miller was a captain, Medical Corps in the U.S. Army Air Corps, during which time he studied how men and their machines adapt to the stress of the extreme temperatures of the desert and the arctic.

 

Malcolm Miller’s first faculty appointment was at Stanford University School of Medicine in 1949. Shortly thereafter, he pursued his early research interests on the innervation of the skin and deep tissues of several species, including the human. He began collaborating with colleagues at UCSF and decided to move to San Francisco from Stanford in 1958. Soon after, he began his long association with the scientific staff of the California Academy of Sciences, where he conducted much of his work on the evolution of the cochlea.

 

Dr. Miller met his wife, Jeanne, when they were both students at UCLA, and both obtained their medical degrees together at UCSF. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Millers spent three years in Nigeria and Zambia helping to establish new schools of medicine in these countries.

 

Dr. Miller is survived by his wife, two brothers, his daughter, one granddaughter and one great-granddaughter. At Dr. Miller’s request, no memorial service will be observed.

 

Peter Ralston