Miller Institute

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Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science
Miller Institute knot logo.jpg
The 6₂ knot known as the Miller Institute knot
Founder(s) Adolph C. Miller and Mary Sprague Miller
Established1955

The Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science was established on the University of California, Berkeley, campus in 1955 after Adolph C. Miller and his wife, Mary Sprague Miller, made a donation to the university. It was their wish that the donation be used to establish an institute "dedicated to the encouragement of creative thought and conduct of pure science".

Contents

The Miller Institute sponsors Miller Research Professors, Visiting Miller Professors and Miller Research Fellows. The first appointments of Miller Professors were made in January 1957. In 2008 the institute created the Miller Senior Fellow program. This program is aimed differently, but is still within the institute's general purpose of supporting excellence in science at Berkeley. The Senior Fellow advances that goal by providing selected faculty with significant discretionary research funds as recognition of distinction in scientific research. The first five-year award went to Professor Randy Schekman, illustrating the high standard of the Senior Fellows. The 2010 Miller Senior Fellow, Saul Perlmutter, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2011. He shares the prize with former Miller Fellow Adam Riess (MF 1996–98) and Brian Schmidt. Randy Schekman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2013.

Miller Research Fellows

The Miller Institute invites faculty from around the world to submit nominations for Miller Fellows. Fellowships are intended for exceptional young scientists newly awarded the doctoral degree and are selected on the basis of their academic achievement and the promise of their scientific research. The institute seeks to discover and encourage individuals of outstanding talent, and to provide them with the opportunity to pursue their research on the Berkeley campus. Each Miller Fellow is sponsored by an academic department on the Berkeley campus and performs his or her research in the facilities provided by the host Berkeley faculty member. [1]

The Story of the Miller Institute Knot

In 1985, Miller Fellow Steven A. Wasserman, his Berkeley faculty host, Nick Cozzarelli, and colleagues published a paper in science entitled, "Discovery of a Predicted DNA Knot Substantiates a Model for Site-Specific Recombination". The paper included an electron micrograph of a single length of double-stranded DNA in six-noded knot. This was photographed at x40,000 primary magnification. [2]

During a talk by Cozzarelli, Nobel Prize winner, Ilya Prigogine was in the audience. He mentioned that in his private art collection he had a 3rd-century A.D. Roman bas relief which showed the identical knot form described in the paper. A photograph of this bas relief became the cover art for the July 12, 1985 issue of Science. [3]

That same year, the Miller Institute was publishing its 30 Year Report and Executive Director Robert Ornduff used the knot on its cover. It was not used again until the early 1990s, when it was rediscovered among many potential logo options and was selected to thereafter be used as the Miller Institute's logo.

In 1999, Visiting Miller Professor and Knot Theorist, Dror Bar-Natan, dubbed the knot "The Miller Knot". It has since gained a bit of notoriety as can be seen in several links:

6_2

Miller Institute knot logo.jpg

Wolfram MathWorld

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The Miller Research Fellows program is the central program of the Adolph C. and Mary Sprague Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science on the University of California Berkeley campus. The program constitutes the support of Research Fellows - a group of the world's most brilliant young scientists. Each year, eight to ten Miller Research Fellows are chosen from hundreds of nominations in all areas of science based on the promise of their scientific research. The Fellowships are three-year appointments, during which the young scientists launch their careers, being mentored by Berkeley's faculty and making use of the facilities at the university. A few Fellows stay on as new Berkeley faculty. Most move on to contribute to faculty positions at other reputed institutions around the world. Other comparable programs are the Harvard Junior Fellows and the Junior Fellowship Program at the University of Cambridge. To date, there have been over 500 Miller Fellows from all areas of science since the inception of the program in 1960. Carl Sagan was among the first group of Fellows in the program. Along with the Miller Fellows, the Miller Institute also supports Miller Professorships for selected Berkeley faculty, Miller Visiting Professorships, and Miller Senior Fellows. In all, the institute has supported more than 1000 scientists, including multiple Nobel Prize winners, nine Fields Medalists and dozens of National Academy of Sciences members.

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References

  1. "Miller Research Fellowships - Miller Institute". berkeley.edu.
  2. Wasserman, S.; Dungan, J.; Cozzarelli, N. (1985-07-12). "Discovery of a predicted DNA knot substantiates a model for site-specific recombination". Science. 229 (4709): 171–174. Bibcode:1985Sci...229..171W. doi:10.1126/science.2990045. ISSN   0036-8075. PMID   2990045.
  3. "Science: 229 (4709)". Science. 229 (4709). 1985-07-12. ISSN   0036-8075.