John Fletcher Miller
John Fletcher Miller (1816-1856)
1857 Obituary [1]
MR. JOHN FLETCHER MILLER was born on the 20th of June 1816, at Whitehaven, in Cumberland, where his ancestors had resided for several generations.
He received a good classical and mathematical education, at a seminary, at Kendal, formerly directed by Dr. John Dalton, but then under the management of Mr. S. Marshall.
From boyhood Mr. Miller was essentially devoted to scientific pursuits, and at the age of fifteen years, he began a local meteorological register, which was continued, almost uninterruptedly, up to the period of his death. In this register he recorded the weight and temperature of the air, the fall of rain, and the force and direction of the wind; and to these particulars he afterwards added, hygrometrical observations on the absolute amount of surface evaporation, which was measured daily for many years,-the determination of the dew point, both by observation, and empirically,-the radiation of heat from the earth’s surface at night,-and the radiating powers of various substances.....
For many years, Mr. Miller devoted much time to the study of astronomical science, and, in 1849, he founded an observatory, which he furnished with an equatorially-mounted refracting telescope, with wire micrometer, chiefly for the purpose of re-examining the principal double and binary stars. With this instrument, he executed a series of measurements, of the position and distances of a selected list of double stars.....
He expired on the 14th July 1856, having just completed his fortieth year.....