In 1968 Prof. Mirka Miller attempted to leave the then Czechoslovakia following the Russian invasion but was stopped when her travelling companion fell ill. She then enrolled in Charles University in Prague where she majored in Mathematics. In 1969 she successfully managed to leave the communist regime, travelled to Vienna and later that year travelled to Australia as a refugee. Prof. Mirka Miller enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts in Sydney University majoring in Mathematics and the then fledgling course, Computer Science. She graduated with a B.A. in 1976. She received Masters of Letters in 1983 and Master of Arts in 1986 from Univesity of New England, Armidale.
Prof. Mirka Miller worked as a lecturer at UNE from 1986 until 1991 during which time she gained a Ph.D. from University of New South Wales, studying externally under the supervision of Professor Jennifer Seberry.
In 1990 Prof. Mirka Miller returned to the Czechoslovakia for the first time since leaving. Prior to the “velvet revolution” Prof. Mirka Miller was declared criminal and would have been imprisoned for two years had she tried to return. From 1990 onwards, Prof. Mirka Miller made at least one trip per year to her home country, which later became known as the Czech Republic.
In 1991 she met her life partner Joe Ryan and in 1992 together they moved to Newcastle where Prof. Mirka Miller was employed as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science. For some years Prof. Mirka Miller was the only female academic staff member in the Faculty of Engineering, rising to Associate Professor and Assistant Dean of Postgraduate Studies.
In 2004 Prof. Mirka Miller and Joe moved to Ballarat where Prof. Mirka Miller took a position as Professor of Computer Science at University of Ballarat (now Federation University). In 2008 the couple returned to Newcastle where Prof. Mirka Miller accepted a position in the Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment as Professor in a research only position.
In 2014 Prof. Mirka Miller was appointed Emeritus Professor in the School of Mathematics and Physical Sciences, University of Newcastle.
In an impressive academic career Prof. Mirka Miller has been awarded several ARC grants (the most recent for the years 2016–2018), a Leverhulme visiting Professorship and a Marie Curie Fellowship at King’s College, London. She was twice UNESCO visiting Professor at ITB, Indonesia and has organised and run CIMPA-UNESCO schools in Graph Theory in Indonesia (2007) and Laos (2014). Since 2012 she has been Conjoint Professor of Mathematics at the University of West Bohemia, Pilsen, Czech Republic.
Prof. Mirka Miller has authored over 200 academic publications in scholarly journals and has founded 4 successful series of workshops International Workshop on Computer Algorithms (IWOCA, 1988), International Workshop on Graph Labeling (IWOGL, 2003), International Workshop on Network Topology (IWONT, 2005) and GraphMasters (2010). Academic research is a very competitive game with people jealously guarding results and fiercely racking up publications. In this world Prof. Mirka Miller stood out because of her generosity and inclusiveness. Prof. Mirka Miller would be genuinely pleased for another researcher who was able to solve a problem on which she had been working.
This attitude won her many friends around the world and resulted in an impressive network of collaborators and co-authors. Prof. Mirka Miller especially enjoyed mentoring students with a talent and passion for Mathematics. She has supervised 20 Ph.D. students to completion and, at the time of death was supervising four more Ph.D. candidates, two Research Masters students and 2 post-doctoral researchers. Her six Indonesian graduates are listed among the most productive researchers in Mathematics in Indonesia and she is fondly referred to as the Mother of Indonesian Graph Theory.
Prof. Mirka Miller’s student legacy includes graduates from China, Cuba, Czech Republic, India, Indonesia, Laos, Spain and Vietnam as well as Australia. Of her 26 past and present students, six are female — a remarkable fraction in Mathematics. Her students learnt from her not just the academic knowledge but also many life skills for working with people. She taught her students industriousness, determination, patience in dealing with people, to listen to other person’s point of view and the value of working in a friendly environment.
Prof. Mirka Miller is an embodiment of love and affection, straightforward, highly target oriented, full with energy and always giving the best impact with whomsoever she met. She worked on a variety of topics such as graph labelings, Ramsey numbers, degree diameter problems, metric dimension, partition dimension, data security and topology of dynamic networks.
Prof. Mirka Miller is survived by her son Filip and life partner Joe Ryan. Her surviving family in Czech Republic consists of her siblings Alena, Jiri, Ivana, Zdenek and their families.
Notes
Peer review under responsibility of Kalasalingam University.