Albert Eugene Miller

Albert Eugene Miller 86, passed away on April 5, 2025 at Holy Cross Village, Notre Dame, IN. Al was born on the night of June 22, 1938, in a farmhouse in Albion, Nebraska, to Elizabeth Rose (Liss) Miller and Albert John Miller. Albert is survived by his wife of 37 years, Gail Rebecca (Marr) Miller.    

In his youth Al was an outstanding pitcher for the Albion High School baseball team. He also played football and played in the high school band. After graduating in 1956, Al received an appointment to the new Air Force Academy being built in Colorado Springs, CO. However, a heart condition prevented him from passing the physical. Instead, he borrowed $10,000 from a local banker friend and enrolled at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, CO. In 1960 he graduated from the School of Mines at the top of his class in Metallurgical Engineering, receiving the Harold Otis Bosworth award for meritorious achievement, becoming the first person in his extended family to receive a bachelor’s degree.

Al went on to receive his PhD in Chemistry from Iowa State University, in 1964. He spent two additional years at Ames Lab, which was under the Atomic Energy Commission. He left Ames for the University of Alberta, where he was a professor for one year. Al was alerted by a friend about an open faculty position at the University of Notre Dame. He was subsequently hired as an Assistant Professor in 1967, beginning a 41-year career at Notre Dame.

Al’s research at this time concentrated on magnetism and magnetostriction in rare earth compounds that are the basis for the high energy permanent magnets that are now widely used in electric motors and disk drives.  Al always had a wide range of technical interests. Al was very capable in electronics, having learned like many of his era by building Heath-Kit projects.  This made it natural for him to be interested in, and subsequently to build, the predecessor of the modern PC, the Altair 8800, which came to fame when it was featured on the January 1975 cover of Popular Electronics. This early interest in computers played a significant role in Al’s research and teaching over the next 15 years.

Al recognized the possibilities for computers in education, both in school and in industry settings. He was a pioneer in using computers in materials science education. He helped to outfit a laboratory with Apple II computers, and developed programs to allow undergraduate students to learn about phase diagrams, programming in BASIC.   He taught Engineering Concepts, a computer class taken by all freshman engineers, for most of the 1980’s, always taking great satisfaction in his interactions with students.  Through a series of research grants, many from IBM Corporation, Al built up a computer facility that was remarkable at the time for the development of interactive video disks for training in industry and secondary schools. Before most of us knew such things were possible, Al was recording video disks and implementing the use of bar codes for data entry.  This also spawned collaborations with colleagues in the Psychology Department, resulting in Al being among the few engineers to have publications in psychology journals.

Al had decades of extensive industrial interactions. He had research collaborations with Union Carbide, Cabot Corporation and Whirlpool among many others. Interactions with CTS Corporation in Elkhart led to the first grant from the State of Indiana aimed at promoting industry-university research to stimulate job growth.

            In this same time period Al, being a man of many interests, was pursuing beekeeping and gardening, and even found time to analyze artifacts from Ghana as part of Culture Analysis studies with Anthropology faculty.  

In 2008, after 41 years of supporting his students ambitions and helping them succeed, Al finally retired from Notre Dame, and continued many years of adventure travel with his dear wife, Rebecca. They visited China, Belize, Peru, the Galapagos Islands, and Costa Rica. Those who knew him will remember his jovial spirit, sense of humor, and his kind, gentle soul.

     A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated at 2:30 p.m. Monday, April 14, 2025 in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. Burial will follow in Cedar Grove Cemetery. A visitation will be held from 12:00 p.m. until 1:30 p.m. Monday in the Kaniewski Funeral Home, 3545 N. Bendix Drive, South Bend, Indiana.

     Memorial Contributions should be directed to the American Diabetes Association (http://diabetes.org) or the Albion Education Foundation, P.O. Box 45, Albion, Nebraska, 68620.

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