Kenneth R. Miller is Professor of Biology at Brown University. He was born in Rahway, New Jersey, and attended Rahway High School. He did his undergraduate work at Brown, graduating in 1970. He earned his Ph.D. in 1974 at the University of Colorado, and spent six years teaching at Harvard University before returning to Brown. He serves as an advisor on life sciences to the NewsHour, a daily PBS television program on news and public affairs, and in 2006 was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). In 2007 he was named the Royce Family Professor for Teaching Excellence at Brown.
His research work on cell membrane structure and function has produced more than 60 scientific papers and reviews in leading journals, including CELL and Nature, as well as leading popular sources such as Natural History and Scientific American. Miller is coauthor, with Joseph S. Levine, of five different high school and college biology textbooks used by millions of students nationwide. In 2005 he was presented with the Presidential Citation of the American Institute for Biological Sciences for distinguished contributions to the biological sciences. In 2006 he received the Public Service Award from the American Society for Cell Biology, and in 2007 was named Science Educator of the Year by the Exploratorium museum in San Francisco. In 2008, he was given the Distinguished Service Award o
One of Miller’s principal interests is the public understanding of evolution. He has written a number of articles defending the scientific integrity of evolution, answering challenges such as “”intelligent design,”” and he served as lead witness in the 2005 trial on evolution and intelligent design in Dover, Pennsylvania. His popular book, Finding Darwin’s God: A Scientist’s Search for Common Ground between God and Evolution, addresses the scientific status of evolutionary theory and its relationship to religious views of nature. His latest book, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul was a Los Angeles Times Finalist for Best Science Book of 2008.
