Photo Courtesy of Lincoln Miller
Miller currently has tenure at the University of Md.
An 11-year old boy stepped onto the Hillsdale campus. He was not visiting a sibling or attending an event, he was headed to Strosacker for his science class. Four years later he graduated summa cum laude with a degree in physics and math. He was 15 years old.
“It was the summer of 1980 when Cole began at Hillsdale,” his father, Lincoln, said. “I would drop him off in the morning before I went to work.”
Now 21 years after his Hillsdale graduation, a 35-year-old Coleman Miller teaches astronomy at the University of Maryland. Last year Miller received tenure after only five years of professorship, a year earlier than most.
Still a young scientist, he is currently the principle investigator of a black hole study funded by a $273,000 three-year grant from the NASA Astrophysics Theory Program.
There were early indications of Miller's unique mind, from grasping the concepts of the periodic table at five years old, to reading 2,000 Leagues Under the Sea before his sixth birthday. Miller dropped out of sixth grade to attend Hillsdale, and there his bright curiosity only expanded.
“You'd hear this high-pitched voice coming down the hall,” Associate Professor of Physics Paul Lucas said. “He was an all-around genius kid. He didn't need to be taught so much as organized—simply shown what curriculum to study.”
Miller had a true love for science and a desire to learn which was manifested by an unusually mature and unpretentious manner.
“Cole considered the subject presented to him as a treasure, and he was very grateful for the careful teaching and insight it provided,” Chairman and Professor of Physics James Peters said. “It was a joy to teach him—to share the excitement of his learning.”
“The professors were willing to do independent studies with me, answer questions,” Miller said. “They were dedicated pedagogues, an excellent influence on me.”
But Miller was and is anything but a science nerd. Enjoying basketball all his life, Miller led the Hillsdale High School freshman basketball squad his junior year at Hillsdale College. Now 6 feet 2 inches, the athletic Miller continues to play for recreation.
“It is a great balance,” Miller said. “I play sports, go out with friends, watch movies, and I'm a big University of Michigan fan.”
“Cole is far from a one-subject man,” Lincoln said. “He's very social—has been for a long time. You could talk to him on any subject—he's very eclectic.”
At Hillsdale, Miller found some close friends and big brothers in the football players, whom he hobnobbed around with on campus. He admits a part of himself to have been a little “frattish,” having a “wonderful time” at the Delt Sig house because of his “high grossness tolerance.” Miller had a good repertoire with many classmates, even the girls.
“Somehow me being so young seemed to stimulate a kind of maternal instinct in the girls,” joked Miller. “After class I would be surrounded by a group of them—I had no idea how to appreciate what was going on at the time.”
Miller was not only unusually gifted in physics but also in math and computer science. After his Hillsdale graduation Miller has had many opportunities to go into the lucrative and progressive computer world.
“He has turned down some stunning amounts of money in the computer science field,” said Lincoln. “But Cole lives for the great excitement of expanding human understanding of the dynamics of the universe.”
“I knew what I wanted more than anything in the world,” said Miller. “I wanted to be in the position to learn things and discover. Computers were interesting, but they weren't nearly as interesting as learning about the universe.”
Miller is in his second year of the three-year NASA grant for his study of intermediate-mass black holes. In August he will give his proposal to receive continuance of that grant, this time for a study involving the generation of gravitational wave sources. The competition to receive a grant from this NASA program is steep, spanning researchers throughout the United States in all areas of astrophysics.
At Maryland Miller primarily commits his time to research but also greatly enjoys teaching one astronomy section.
“There's a real wonder about the universe, and it's such a triumph to present this to a group of students,” Miller said. “It's a constant reminder of why this is such a fantastic field.”
Another grant received from the National Science Foundation for $300,000 dollars for the study of neutron stars has just ended, and Miller will be receiving word soon if that grant will also be renewed (for a continuing study of brightness variations from neutron stars and black holes.
“One reason I chose Maryland was because there's a lot of independence here,” Miller said. “I am able to design my own research project and lead it.”
Miller was runner-up for Best Professor at University of Maryland in 2004, an unusual vote for a professor who only teaches one section a semester. It is evident that the students at Maryland sense the passion and uniqueness of this individual.
“He understands the world,” Peters said. “He doesn't have that many misconceptions of it. He appreciates what all has gone on, and he understands his place in this vast universe.”
“To think there is possibly a new window to see the universe through,” Miller said. “It is most interesting—to test the extremes of incredibly dense matter, the extremes of gravity, the limits of physics.”