Miller, William Hallowes

Miller, William Hallowes (1801-1880) was born in South Wales and was Professor of Mineralogy at Cambridge University from 1832 until he died. He wrote the book that explained the notation developed by William Whewell (who also coined the word scientist) he gave full credit to the pioneering work of his mentor, Whewell, but we still refer to Miller indices. 

Weiss and Mohs also developed notation systems relating each face to the coordinate axes, but these were surpassed in use by a system first introduced by the British polymath William Whewell (1794-1866) during a crystallography fellowship period in 1825, and later incorporated in an 1839 book by his student William Hallowes Miller (1801-1880). The notation system, now named after Miller, is discussed further in Section 1.3.2. 

William Whewell (1794-1866) introduces a notation system relating crystal faces to coordinate axes (Miller indices). These were published in a book by Whewell s student William Hallowes Miller (1801-1880) in 1839. 

It is important to describe each crystal face in a numerical way if data on different crystals or from different laboratories are to be compared. The method used to describe crystal faces is derived from the Law of Rational Indices, proposed by Haiiy and Arnould Carangeot. This Law states that each face of a crystal may be described, by reference to its intercepts on three noncollinear axes, by three small whole numbers (that is, by three rational indices)/ From this law, William Whewell introduced a specific way of designating crystal faces by such indices, and William Hallowes Miller popularized it. The integers that characterize crystal faces are called Miller indices h, k, and 1. When this method is used to describe crystal faces, it is rare to find h, k, or / larger than 6, even in crystals with complicated shapes. An example of the buildup of unit cells to give crystals with different faces is shown in Figure 2.11. 

Crystal faces have a very strict nomenclature Qikl) enclosed in round brackets, such as (110), (030), or (2l3), where h, k, and I are called indices (these three letters are always italicized but the numbers never are). They are sometimes called Miller indices because of their definition by William Hallowes Miller in 1839. If a plane cuts the three crystallographic axes x, y, and z respectively at intercepts (distances) p, q, and r from the chosen origin, then h, k, and I are simply defined as... 

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