Due to the Great Depression, he and his wife Alice (née Brown) worked as a butler and maid for a wealthy Boston doctor for the following two years.
[3] In 1937, after submitting over 700 job applications, he was offered a place in the physics department of Dillard University, a private, African American liberal arts college in New Orleans.
During World War II he worked as a civilian physicist for the US Army Signal Corps while holding fellowships in physics at the universities of Idaho and Oklahoma.
In 1952, he joined the physics department at the then small El Camino College in Torrance, California (1952–1974), to maximum student enrollments due to his great popularity[3] and where he was instantly recognizable by his casual hair and horn-rimmed eyeglasses.
Miller was intolerant of misspelled words and misplaced punctuation, and often angered his colleagues because he charged that the students of most faculties were not learning enough.
Boys and girls are emerging from every level of school with certificates and degrees, but they can't read, write or calculate.
[3]From 1963 to 1986, Miller was the visiting lecturer for the physics department of the University of Sydney,[4] and from 1965 to 1985 at the United States Air Force Academy.
From 1962 to 1964, he was Disney's "Professor Wonderful" on new introductions, filmed at Disneyland, to the syndicated reruns of The Mickey Mouse Club.
A paper straw normally does not have sufficient strength but if one pinches the end, the trapped air acts as a piston, easily piercing the potato.
For the first time in his career he could not get this to work, and he loudly exclaimed "Australian straws ain't worth a damn!".
Due to budget constraints the offer was withdrawn, but an agreement was reached for Miller to host his own science-based TV series which was filmed at the University of Sydney where he taught.
(the program title, which also would become his stock phrase), was broadcast from 1963 to 1986 and became an instant hit known for its "cool experiments, interesting science, and fantastic hair".
He introduced each episode with the line: How do you do, ladies and gentlemen, and boys and girls [sometimes adding some others like: and teachers, and fathers, and mothers, and people].I am Julius Sumner Miller, and physics is my business [whereupon often presenting the subject of each lesson after the characteristical phrase: And my very special business today is ...]Around 1963, Miller was also one of the team of celebrity lecturers in the University of Sydney's pioneering "Summer School of Science", broadcast early in the morning during Australia's long summer holidays in January.
Fellow presenters included physicist Harry Messel and the molecular biologist James Watson fresh from his triumphant co-discovery of the helical structure of DNA, but decades ahead of his work on the Human Genome.
During the 1980s, Miller appeared in a famous series of Australian television commercials for Cadbury chocolate, using his stock phrase "Why is it so?
", demonstrating a simple scientific principle, and describing how each block of chocolate "embraces substantial nourishment and enjoyment", and contained "a glass and a half of full-cream dairy milk".
While in Australia, Miller also appeared in ads for non-stick saucepans and Ampol petroleum,[8] which included demonstrations of real principles of physics, albeit briefly.
[9] The character Julius in the Ty the Tasmanian Tiger series of video games is inspired by Miller, and frequently uses the phrase "Why is this so?"