Jonathan Miller

From Philosopedia

Miller, Jonathan Wolfe [Sir] (21 July 1934– )

Miller is the London-born physician, actor, theater and film director known to Americans particularly for his co-authoring and acting in “Beyond the Fringe” (1961–1964) and for his 1986 directing on Broadway of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.”

His father Emanuel (1892 - 1970) was a psychiatrist specializing in children, and his mother Betty (née Spiro 1910-1965) was a novelist and biographer. A sister, who died in 2006, worked in television and retained an involvement with her parents' Judaism. Jonathan Miller, however, was an atheist. In 2004, on BBC he wrote and presented four television programs about Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief.

He was associate director of the National Theatre (1973–1975) and artistic director of Old Vic (1988–1990). He has directed many dramas and operas, including works by Shakespeare, Marston, Wilde, Henry James, Beethoven, Mozart, and Verdi.

Miller, a neurologist who was a research fellow in the history of medicine at University College, London University (1970–1973), is author of Freud: The Man, His World, His Influence (1972) and The Don Giovanni Book (1990).

Miller has been decorated with the Order of the British Empire (OBE) and in 1996 was admitted into the Council for Secular Humanism’s Humanist Academy. Also, he is an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society and in 2006 was appointed president of the Rationalist Association. In 2002, he was knighted.

In 2007, his A Brief History of Disbelief was shown in three one-hour segments on television. The film points out that philosophy, not science, has played the larger role in the gradual erosion of belief. The series describes the first unbelievers in ancient Greece and continues through D'Holbach and others to the present, including interviews with recently deceased playwright Arthur Miller, biologist Richard Dawkins, philosopher Daniel Dennett, and physicist Steven Weinberg.