The best teacher I ever had

4/10/2007

“How do you do ladies and gentlemen, and boys and girls, and men and women, and people, and my friends everywhere and abundant. I am Julius Sumner Miller, and physics is my business. The Professor they call me in this place, and wonderful things emerge from here.”
—Julius Sumner Miller (May 17, 1909 - April 14, 1987)
This week marks exactly two decades since the death of the best teacher I ever had, the Professor.
School was in nearly every Saturday morning when I was a freckle-faced, tangle-haired lad, and my classroom was the Hilarious House of Frightenstein; a delightfully zany and campy children’s program produced, for what seemed like ten dollars a show, at CHCH TV in Hamilton.
The program was famous for its many oddball characters, from the Wolfman to Grizelda the Ghastly Gourmet, all brought to life by the talents of Billy Van. Julius Sumner Miller, however, was the castle’s resident genius.
He helped me to better understand the behaviour of nature, and when he said physics and mathematics were good for the mind, spirit and soul, I actually believed him.
You believed Julius Sumner Miller, because not only did he appear brilliant, playful and enthusiastic, but he was also a little scary, hidden away in his castle laboratory.
What little hair the Professor had left was white and wild, as if thrown upon his head in a windstorm. His eyes, topped by eyebrows that looked more like big, black, furry caterpillars, burned right into you. Scariest of all was his powerful forearms, which looked capable of tearing you to pieces, if he ever caught you not paying attention.
But, I did pay attention, and I learned all about how the world works; from force and friction, to insulation and inertia, to expansion and contraction and density.
My favourite of his experiments was the one where he used two ashtrays to illustrate the conduction of heat. After fumbling with which end of his cigarette to light, warning young viewers about the dangers of such an activity, the Professor demonstrated how a cigarette will go out in a glass ashtray, because glass is a good thermal conductor, whereas a wooden ashtray does not take the heat away, and the cigarette will continue to smolder and burn.
For more advanced viewers, the Professor would often throw in a few heavier topics, such as Bernoulli’s principle, Pythagoras’ law of vibrating strings, Newton’s laws of motion, and Faraday’s electromagnetic induction.
The Professor said his job was to entertain and amuse you and excite your enthusiasm, curiosity and spirit, but also to raise some questions which are good to think about. And, if you are not enchanted by this, as I have been for 50 years—he would say—you need your soul awakened, your spirit enlivened, and your curiosity stirred.
Hilarious House of Frightenstein was only a brief stop on the teaching journey of Julius Sumner Miller, and he roamed the world bringing the light of physics to the masses. He even had a hit TV show in Australia. And, although my days are filled more with language than science, I am still more than a little enchanted by the kindly Professor.