William T. Miller papers

Professor of Chemistry, Cornell University.

William Miller received a B.S. and a Ph.D. from Duke University, and came to Cornell in 1936. During World War II, he worked at the S.A.M. Laboratories of the Manhattan Project at Columbia University on highly stable fluorocarbon polymers that would not react with uranium gas, thus making possible the separation of the fissionable isotope at Oak Ridge. After the war he returned to Cornell where he taught until his retirement in 1977. In 1974 he received the American Chemical Society award for Creative Work in Fluorine Chemistry, and in 1986 the French Moissan Centenary Medal in honor of Henri Moisson, who discovered the element fluorine in 1886. In addition to his teaching and research at Cornell, Miller was active in the planning of the new research wing of Baker Laboratory and in reconstructing the teaching laboratories in the building.