Hilton Miller: Biography
Born in Johannesburg in 1931. Hilton Miller began studying engineering at Witwatersrand University, but switched to Mathematics and Physics. After a post-grad in Mathematics he went to Cambridge University where he took the Mathematics Tripos in two years followed by a further degree in statistics. Returning to South Africa in 1956, he worked at Stats lab of the Department of Mines, SA. In 1958 After marrying Riva Suzman, they moved to the Manchester, UK where he worked for ICI as a statistician. In 1959 he went back to Cambridge to complete his Doctorate in Statistics where he was credited with a series of new mathematical pearls and solutions. In 1962 he moved to London to lecture at the Statistics Department at Birkbeck College. There, as a Reader at Imperial College he co-wrote with David Cox;The Theory Stochastic Processes (published in 1965), which remains a bench line text to this day.
In 1970 he chose to leave academic life. He became a consultant statistician to Sun Alliance Insurance and began later to work part-time, allowing him the time to devote to painting. He began attending painting classes at City Lit. While he did not respond well to the class format, he developed a long relationship with the tutor, the painter Michael Horn, who for many years was the only outside person to whom Miller regularly showed his work for criticism and advice. In 1973 the family bought a house in the South of France, and there he draw regularly from landscape. Converting a room to a studio in their Highgate home, he used the drawings as a source for painting while in London. He later began drawing and using digital photography on trips to visit his son, an artist based in Co Sligo, Ireland. His subjects remained centered on landscape until his death in 2012.
The first formal exhibition took place at the Highgate Gallery, Highgate Literary & Scientific Institution in 2011. In May to June 2012 his work is featured in "Emerging Artists" at The Dock, Carrick on Shannon, Ireland in a show of four European artists who started working later in life, curated by Alice Lyons.
His wife, Riva Miller has spent her working life as a Family Therapist at the Royal Free Hospital and St John & Elizabeth Hospital, London. They have two children. Peter Miller, is a film editor based in London specialising in documentaries; Nick Miller is a painter, based in Ireland.