Miller was born in Ipswich, Suffolk and educated at Ackworth School and King's College London.

Although primarily a chemist, the scientific contributions for which Miller is mainly remembered today are in spectroscopy and astrochemistry, new fields in his time.

Miller wrote the textbook Elements of Chemistry, Theoretical and Practical, Part I Chemical Physics in 1855.

He won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1867 jointly with William Huggins, for their spectroscopic study of the composition of stars.

[4] In 1870 Miller had completed the manuscript for Introduction to the Study of Inorganic Chemistry when he fell ill.