L. Keith Miller was born February 10, 1936 in Troy, New York. He received his A.B. from Reed College in 1957, his M.A. in 1959 and his Ph.D. in 1961, both from the University of Illinois. All his degrees were in sociology.

Miller held several research and teaching assistantships in the late 1950s and early 1960s, including with the Jury Project at the University of Chicago, the Gifted Child Project at Portland, Oregon Public Schools, and with the Small Groups Project at Washington University-St. Louis. He held assistant professorships at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale and Washington University-St. Louis in their Sociology Departments in the mid-1960s. He was also a medical research associate at the Anna State Hospital's Behavior Research Laboratory in Anna, Illinois.

Miller joined the University of Kansas faculty in the Department of Sociology and the Department of Human Development and Family Life (HDFL) in 1968. He reached full Professor status in 1976 and was later awarded emeritus status by the department, now called the Department of Applied Behavioral Science.

Miller was involved in several projects in Lawrence, Kansas to improve community. He and his wife Ocoee Miller started Penn House, an organization to help low-income individuals and families get back on their feet. He was also instrumental in establishing Sunflower House, a student cooperative at KU, which was initially called the Campus Improvement Association (CIA). Sunflower house was an "experimental living project," a way of sharing household tasks in order to create a successful communal living experience for unrelated adults. Several of Miller's graduate students lived at Sunflower House and used their experiences in their research, as did Miller in his own research and writing.

L. Keith Miller is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and a member of the Association of Behavior Analsysts and the American Association of Behavior Therapists. He has written dozens of articles, book reviews, and other publications, often in collaboration with colleagues, and his books include Principles of Everyday Behavior Analysis (1975, second edition 1980) and an Instructor's Manual for Principles of Everyday Behavior Analysis (1975, second edition 1980). Miller has served as a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, Journal of Personalized Instruction, Behavior Analysis and Social Action, and Behavior and Social Issues, as well as serving as a guest reviewer and editorial consultant for several journals and publishing companies. He has also been a periodic grant reviewer for the National Science Foundation.