RIVERSIDE, CA, December 18, 2020 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Marquis Who's Who, the world's premier publisher of biographical profiles, is proud to present Thomas Albert Miller with the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award. An accomplished listee, Dr. Miller celebrates many years' experience in his professional network, and has been noted for achievements, leadership qualities, and the credentials and successes he has accrued in his field. As in all Marquis Who's Who biographical volumes, individuals profiled are selected on the basis of current reference value. Factors such as position, noteworthy accomplishments, visibility, and prominence in a field are all taken into account during the selection process.
Thomas Miller served in the California National Guard from 1956 to 1962. During that service he was sent to the US Army Armor Radio Maintenance school at Fort Knox Kentucky for 13 weeks in the summer while a student at UC Riverside. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics and physics in 1962 from UCR. While in graduate school in physics at UCR, he had a job in the entomology department developing a device to detect chlorinated hydrocarbon insecticides in the laboratory of Professor Francis Gunther, a world authority on insecticide residues. He found the challenges in entomology were more interesting than physics and switched to graduate school in entomology.
Instead of doing graduate research for a residue chemist, Miller chose as his major professor, Robert Metcalf, a professor in the same department and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Metcalf suggested that Miller should use his background in electronics learned in the US Army to study the mode of action of insecticides using the American cockroach heart as a model system.
Miller developed a neurophysiological method to record the cockroach heartbeat. The most famous comparative physiology textbook of the time was authored by Prosser and Brown. In it, the cockroach heart was described as neurogenic, meaning the heart was driven to contract by nervous impulses from a system of cardiac neurons. Miller's research at UC Riverside showed that the cockroach heart was myogenic; meaning, the contractions were an inherent property of the heart muscle itself. This shocked the world of zoology at the time.
Miller received a Doctor of Philosophy in entomology in 1967. He then obtained a research associate and National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow at the University of Illinois from 1967 until 1968 where he continued the cockroach heart work. He continued the same research as a North Atlantic Treaty Organization postdoctoral fellow at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, between 1968 and 1969 in the laboratory of Peter Usherwood.
Dr. Miller is a professor emeritus of entomology who has served at his alma mater, the University of California Riverside (UC Riverside), for nearly five decades. Leaving an indelible mark on his department, he is renowned for his contributions both on campus and in the field. Hired as an assistant professor in 1969 and achieving a full professorship in 1976, Dr. Thomas also served as the acting head of the division, as well as the head of the division of toxicology and physiology. Teaching a variety of courses in insect physiology and toxicology, he also conducted extensive research throughout his academic career. Additionally, he was a visiting professor in the zoology department at the University of Glasgow in Scotland during his career at UC Riverside in 1973. Miller's most outstanding contribution was in interdisciplinary research; bringing separate scientific approaches to problems in different fields.
Finding success during an incredible career that he supported through various initiatives, Dr. Thomas was heavily involved as an organizer, co-organizer and speaker for dozens of symposiums and workshops throughout the world. He was also a member of multiple different committees, such as the scientific program committee of the International Congress of Insect Biotechnology and Industry. Likewise, Dr. Thomas distinguished himself as a visiting scholar and visiting professor at various institutions worldwide.
Dr. Miller readily switched subjects driven by needs in agricultural research. He went from insecticide mode of action using neurophysiology to insecticide resistance in cotton pests and the physiology of cotton pests. In more recent years, his research included developing such Metarhizium fungal candidates as biopesticides to control katydid pests found in certain areas of Papua New Guinea and California. Among his greatest achievements, besides discovering the myogenicity of insect hearts, is solation of the diapause protein in pink bollworm and a patented cure for potato taste defect in coffee caused by an insect infecting coffee plants with pathogenic microbes.
Dr. Miller has disseminated his research findings by authoring over 260 articles in various scientific publications, such as the Journal of Analytical Chemistry and the Journal of Economic Entomology. He has also contributed more than 40 book chapters and reviews, edited more than 25 books and monographs and founded three book series. He is presently on the editorial board of the Journal of Asia-Pacific Entomology. Most notably, Dr. Miller authored three books; "Insect Neurophysiological Techniques" in 1979, "Random Thoughts on Recombinant Insects" in 2012 and "Adventures in Entomology" in 2017.
A respected member of several national and international industry-related organizations, he was elected as a fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science, the Entomological Society of America and the Royal Entomological Society of the UK. He is also a member of the American Chemical Society and the co-founder of the Ali Baba Club. Securing several grants from the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke, the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Institute of Environmental Health Science between 1969 and 1984, Dr. Miller also earned the Gregor Mendel Award for Research in Biological Sciences in Prague.
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