Marvin M Miller

Marvin M. Miller passed away on July 19, 2025 after a brief illness at the age of 88 ½ in Brookline, Massachusetts. His funeral was held on July 20, 2025. He is survived by his wife of 63 years, Elsa Krasner Miller, and his two daughters: Rebecca Rae Stern, and Nina J. Miller; his grandchildren: Peter Louis Stern, Joel Adrian Stern and Rafi N. Gold, his sister, Doris Mann, and many nieces, nephews, cousins, and other family.

Marvin was a resident of Boston since 1974 where he had a long career as a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Born in Crown Heights, Brooklyn to parents Benjamin and Hindeleah Miller, he graduated from Erasmus High School, attended City College of New York, University of Rochester for his Master’s, and received a PhD in Applied Physics from Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute.

After retiring from the MIT Department of Nuclear Engineering in 1996, he became a Senior Scientist Emeritus at both the MIT Center for International Studies, where he was a member of the Security Studies Program, and the Nuclear Engineering Department. Trained as a physicist, he was a tenured Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at Purdue University conducting research on laser theory and applications before joining MIT in 1976. At MIT his principal activities were in the areas of nuclear arms control and the environmental impacts of energy use. In arms control, his major regional interests were the Middle East and South Asia, and he was directly involved in the negotiation with heads of state in order to obtain cooperation with non-proliferation treaties, traveling extensively around the world. From 1984-86, Dr. Miller was on leave from MIT as a visiting scholar with the U.S. Arms Control & Disarmament Agency (ACDA) and, after returning to MIT, he continued in that capacity with the U.S. State Department. He was also a consultant for the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.S. Department of Energy and Los Alamos and Livermore National Laboratories. He is the author of more than 80 publications in the fields of laser theory and applications, energy, and arms control. He particularly enjoyed supporting the careers of women in science and mentored many students. He was a progressive thinker, a voracious reader, and had lifelong appreciation of classical music, attending cultural events and concerts frequently with his wife Elsa until the very end of his life.

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