16 Facts About Jacques Miller

Jacques Francis Albert Pierre Miller AC FRS FAA was born on 2 April 1931 and is a French-Australian research scientist.

Jacques Miller is known for having discovered the function of the thymus and for the identification of mammalian species of the two major subsets of lymphocytes and their function.

Jacques Miller was educated at St Aloysius' College in Sydney, where he met his future colleague, Sir Gustav Nossal.

Jacques Miller studied medicine at the University of Sydney, and had his first experience of laboratory research in the laboratory of Professor Patrick de Burgh where he studied virus infection.

In 1958, Jacques Miller travelled to the United Kingdom on a Gaggin Research Fellowship from the University of Queensland.

Jacques Miller was accepted to the Chester Beatty Research Institute of Cancer Research and as a PhD student at the University of London.

Jacques Miller chose to study the pathogenesis of lymphocytic leukemia in mice, expanding on the research of Ludwik Gross into murine leukemia virus.

Jacques Miller showed that experimental animals without a thymus at birth were incapable of rejecting foreign tissues and resisting many infections, thus demonstrating that the thymus is vital for the development and function of the adaptive immune system.

Jacques Miller's discovery has led many to describe Miller as the "world's only living person who can claim to have been the first to have described the functions of a human organ".

In 1963, Jacques Miller continued his work into the function of the thymus at the National Institutes of Health.

In 1966, Jacques Miller returned to Australia to become a research group leader at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, at the invitation of its new director Sir Gustav Nossal, the successor of Sir Macfarlane Burnet.

Jacques Miller went on to show that the thymus produces the T cells, that it removes autoreactive T cells and several other landmark findings in immunology.

Jacques Miller was the first to provide evidence that thymus-derived immune cells are important for the defense against certain tumors, which forms the basis for modern cancer immunotherapy.

Semi-retired since 1996, Jacques Miller is still involved in immunological research.

Jacques Miller has had a longstanding interest in art, and studied art in the 1980s.

Jacques Miller's art has been exhibited at venues in Melbourne.