Barbados-born inventor, brother of Dame Billie Miller, dies at 81

B arbados-born inventor and outdoorsman Buddie Miller, brother of former deputy prime minister Dame Billie Miller, who built a career in Trinidad in engineering, business management and invention, died on Wednesday, aged 81. Miller, of Maracas Valley, St Joseph, moved to Trinidad in 1965. He went on to serve as chief engineer at Nestlé, regional general manager at Chesebrough Ponds and as a business consultant. Alongside his corporate career, he developed inventions for which he held multiple international patents, according to his family’s death announcement.

Buddie Miller in 2009 (James Fuller/Caribbean Beat) His Jojovera exfoliating and skin-conditioning soap won the special prize for the entry with the most commercial potential at Trinidad and Tobago’s inaugural Prime Minister’s Awards for Innovation and Invention in 2000, administered by NIHERST, the country’s scientific research institute. He also received a special award of merit for diversity in innovations in the 2002 competition and first prize in mechanical engineering in 2004. Among his creations was a general-knowledge game called Brainstorm , which he claimed was copied and sold as the globally popular Trivial Pursuit , In a 2009 interview with Caribbean Beat magazine, Miller said he had invented and patented Brainstorm in 1977. He alleged that a Canadian company subsequently produced a game with the same subject headings and most of the same questions. He had been involved in a legal battle over the game since 2000. Miller was born in Barbados in 1945, the second child of Frederick Edward “Freddie” Miller, who served as health and social services minister in the 1956-1961 Hugh Gordon Cummins administration, and his mother, Mildred Miriam (Lashley), a nurse. He developed a longstanding interest in hunting…