George James Miller

Professor George Miller, who has died at the age of 66, was primarily an epidemiologist interested in cardiovascular disease, with the considerable advantage that he was unusually knowledgeable in the fields of biochemistry, haematology, and medical statistics, on which much of his work depended. But he had even wider ranging interests, having also worked on the economics of land and tax policies, based on his study of British history over 1000 years, and which led to two major publications.

George James Miller was born in Liverpool. He graduated from Manchester University's medical school in 1963. After appointments in Manchester, he moved to the University Hospital, Kingston, Jamaica, before joining the clinical scientific staff of the Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit there. It was during this time that his aptitude for epidemiology emerged. By careful studies of lung function and smoking habits in the community, he showed how a form of pulmonary fibrosis unique to the region was attributable to the habit of smoking black-fat tobacco. In 1971 he returned to the United Kingdom to join the MRC Pneumoconiosis Unit, Penarth, South Wales. While there, he collaborated with his brother, Norman, then working in Edinburgh, to write a paper that was to become the most cited ever published in the …