Willet Green Miller died at his residence in Toronto, Ont., on February 4th, 1925, from meningitis, following an illness of only five days’ duration.
A Canadian by birth, being born in Norfolk County on July 19th, 1866, he attended the county schools and Port Rowan High School, going thence to the University of Toronto, where he graduated in 1890, after specializing in chemistry, mineralogy and geology. He held a Fellowship in mineralogy and geology at Toronto until 1893, during the summer vacations acting as field assistant to parties sent out by the Geological Survey of Canada under Dr. Robert Bell. In 1893 he was appointed lecturer in geology to the newly-founded School of Mining of Queen’s University, Kingston, Ont., subsequently becoming Professor in that faculty. During the nine years spent at Kingston, he took short post graduate courses at Chicago, Harvard and Heidelberg, more with the object of becoming acquainted with men and methods than for the purpose of any particular study’.
On April 30th, 1902, he was appointed Provincial Geologist of Ontario, and about 18 months later he made an examination of the newly-discovered deposits at Long Lake, which are now known to the world by his reports, and by his direct act of sponsorship, as Cobalt. His study of the field was so thorough that his opinions have not been reversed by further experience, and his reports on Cobalt are justly regarded as classics, only supplemented by later reports. In 1908 Dr. Miller (he had meantime received the degree of LL.D. of Queen’s University) was elected President of the Canadian Mining Institute, as it was then styled. In 1913 the degree of LL.D. was conferred on him by the University of Toronto at a special convocation. On June 12th, 1919, on the occasion of the incorporation by Royal Charter of the Imperial Mineral Resources Bureau, he was selected by the Government of Canada as its appointed representative on the Board of Governors, an office which involved frequent visits to England.
More recently, Dr. Miller was elected President of the Geological Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and but for his death would have attended the 1925 Meeting of the Association, held at Southampton. He received many honours and was a member of many important scientific bodies. He was a Member of the Royal. Ontario Nickel Commission, appointed in 1915 to investigate the world’s resources of that metal, and in that connexion paid visits to Great Britain, Cuba and New Caledonia. He was a Trustee and Member of the Board of Governors of Queen’s University, Kingston, Ont., a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and a member of all the leading Canadian scientific societies. He was awarded the Gold Medal of the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy in 1915, ‘in recognition of his eminence as an economic geologist and of the important part played in mining by economic geology ’.
Dr. Miller was elected an Honorary Member of the Institution in 1908.
Vol. 35, Trans IMM 1925-6, pp.448-9
