a 2019 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship<\/a> \u2013 better known as a \u201cGenius Grant\u201d \u2013 and who was presenting on his \u201cchance\u201d discovery at an event at the Kasser Theater on December 4.<\/p>\nNearly 400 people from the Montclair and campus community attended the lecture by Miller on his scholarship and research. A Rhodes Scholar who attended Princeton University as an undergraduate and Oxford for his doctorate, Miller achieved international recognition in 2015 after discovering the earliest known draft of the King James Bible.<\/p>\n
Miller and Kingstone quickly eschewed the idea of discoveries in the humanities \u2013 or elsewhere \u2013 happening by \u201cpure serendipity.\u201d Rather, said Kingstone, such a discovery \u201crequires great intellect and great insight, an ability to draw on different areas of humanities in order to recognize what remains hidden in plain sight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Miller then took the audience through his circuitous route to the discovery \u2013 a veritable whodunit involving prominent and obscure literary, religious and historical figures of early 17th-century England \u2013 based around his specialization as a scholar of the poet John Milton.<\/p>\n