Хью Миллер: Геолог, фольклорист және қайғылы өмір жолы

Scottish geologist, folklorist

Hugh Miller (10 October 1802 – 23/24 December 1856) was a self taught Scottish geologist and writer, folklorist and an evangelical Christian.

For most of 1856, Miller had severe headaches and mental distress, and the most probable diagnosis is of psychotic depression. Victorian medicine did not help. He feared that he might harm his wife or children because of persecutory delusions. Miller died by suicide, shooting himself in the chest with a revolver in his house, Shrub Mount, Portobello, on the night of 23/24 December 1856. That night he had finished checking printers' proofs for his book on geology and Christianity, The Testimony of the Rocks. Before his death, he wrote a poem called Strange but True. He died on 24 December 1856. His funeral procession, attended by thousands, was amongst the largest in the memory of Edinburgh residents. He is buried in the Grange Cemetery in Edinburgh. His is a simple red granite monument on the north boundary wall, close to the northwest corner. His son Hugh Miller FRSE (1850 1896), who was six years old when his father killed himself, lies on his left side.

Though he had no academic credentials, he is today considered one of Scotland's most influential Victorian palaeontologists, particularly in communicating science to a wider audience. Miller made many new discoveries, including several Silurian sea scorpions (the eurypterid genus Hughmilleria was named in his honour), and many Devonian fishes, including several placoderms (the arthrodire Millerosteus also honoured him), described in his popular books. The fossil cypress Hughmillerites, and the parareptile Milleretta were also named after him. The BP operated Miller oilfield in the North Sea was named after Hugh Miller. Hugh Miller Place, a street in the Stockbridge Colonies area of Edinburgh, is named in his honour. Miller's wife Lydia played a major role in editing and securing posthumous publication of compilations as books of many of his Witness articles and public addresses, thus gaining for him a continued wider readership for another 50 years after his death. His second daughter, Harriet Miller Davidson was a published poet who married a clergyman after her father's suicide. She moved to Adelaide where her husband was a minister and she published poems and stories in both countries about temperance and of daughters left by inspirational fathers. There is a bust of Hugh Miller in the Hall of Heroes at the Wallace Monument in Stirling. His home in Cromarty is open as a geological museum, with specimens collected in the immediate area; a weekend event at the site in 2008 was part of celebrations marking the bicentenary of the Geological Society of London. The Hugh Miller Trail starts at a small car park on a minor road just past Eathie Mains, about 3 mile (5 km) south of Cromarty, and leads about 1 mile (2 km) down a steep slope through woodland to the foreshore at Eathie Haven on the Moray Firth, where Miller began collecting fossils. It was here that he found his first fossil ammonite, in Jurassic rocks. The haven was originally a salmon fishing station, and a former fishermen's bothy, open to the public, has a display board about the geology of the area and Miller's fossil discoveries. The Friends of Hugh Miller are a charity set up to celebrate and promote his legacy, and encourage the study and practice of the earth sciences in the 21st century in Miller's name. Since 2015 the bi annual Hugh Miller Writing Competition has been held, with entries inspired by Miller and related themes.