Sir David John Cameron MacKay (22 April 1967 – 14 April 2016) was a British

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

, and academic. He was the Regius Professor of Engineering in the Department of Engineering at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

and from 2009 to 2014 was Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK

Department of Energy and Climate Change The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) was a Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom, department of the government of the United Kingdom created on 3 October 2008, by Prime Minister Gordon Brown to take over some of the ...

(DECC). MacKay wrote the book ''Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air''.

Education

MacKay was educated at Newcastle High School and represented Britain in the International Physics Olympiad in Yugoslavia in 1985, receiving the first prize for experimental work. He continued his education at

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any ...

, and received a

Bachelor of Arts A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...

degree in

Natural Sciences Natural science or empirical science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer ...

(Experimental and

theoretical physics Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain, and predict List of natural phenomena, natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental p ...

) in 1988. He went to the

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small group of institutes ...

(Caltech) as a

Fulbright Scholar The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States cultural exchange programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the peopl ...

, where his supervisor was

John Hopfield John Joseph Hopfield (born July 15, 1933) is an American physicist and emeritus professor of Princeton University, most widely known for his study of associative neural networks in 1982. He is known for the development of the Hopfield network. ...

. He was awarded a PhD in 1992.

Career and research

In January 1992 MacKay was appointed the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

Smithson Research Fellow at

Darwin College, Cambridge Darwin College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded on 28 July 1964, Darwin was Cambridge University's first graduate-only college, and also the first to admit both men and wo ...

, continuing his cross-disciplinary research in the

Cavendish Laboratory The Cavendish Laboratory is the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, and is part of the School of Physical Sciences. The laboratory was opened in 1874 on the New Museums Site as a laboratory for experimental physics and is named ...

, the Department of Physics of the University of Cambridge. In 1995 he was made a University Lecturer in the Cavendish Laboratory. He was promoted in 1999 to a Readership, in 2003 to a Professorship in

Natural Philosophy Natural philosophy or philosophy of nature (from Latin ''philosophia naturalis'') is the philosophical study of physics, that is, nature and the physical universe, while ignoring any supernatural influence. It was dominant before the develop ...

and in 2013 to the post of Regius Professorship of Engineering. MacKay's contributions in

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

and

information theory Information theory is the mathematical study of the quantification (science), quantification, Data storage, storage, and telecommunications, communication of information. The field was established and formalized by Claude Shannon in the 1940s, ...

include the development of

Bayesian method Bayesian inference ( or ) is a method of statistical inference in which Bayes' theorem is used to calculate a probability of a hypothesis, given prior evidence, and update it as more information becomes available. Fundamentally, Bayesian inferen ...

s for

neural network A neural network is a group of interconnected units called neurons that send signals to one another. Neurons can be either biological cells or signal pathways. While individual neurons are simple, many of them together in a network can perfor ...

s, the rediscovery (with Radford M. Neal) of

low-density parity-check code Low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes are a class of error correction codes which (together with the closely-related turbo codes) have gained prominence in coding theory and information theory since the late 1990s. The codes today are widely us ...

s, and the invention of '' Dasher'', a software application for communication especially popular with those who cannot use a traditional keyboard. He cofounded the knowledge management company Transversal. In 2003, his book ''Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms'' was published. His interests beyond research included the development of effective teaching methods and African development; he taught regularly at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in

Cape Town Cape Town is the legislature, legislative capital city, capital of South Africa. It is the country's oldest city and the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. Cape Town is the country's List of municipalities in South Africa, second-largest ...

from its foundation in 2003 to 2006. In 2008 he completed a book on energy consumption and energy production without

fossil fuel A fossil fuel is a flammable carbon compound- or hydrocarbon-containing material formed naturally in the Earth's crust from the buried remains of prehistoric organisms (animals, plants or microplanktons), a process that occurs within geolog ...

s called ''Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air''. MacKay used £10,000 of his own money to publish the book, and the initial print run of 5,000 sold within days. The book received praise from ''

The Economist ''The Economist'' is a British newspaper published weekly in printed magazine format and daily on Electronic publishing, digital platforms. It publishes stories on topics that include economics, business, geopolitics, technology and culture. M ...

'', ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'', and

Bill Gates William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American businessman and philanthropist. A pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, he co-founded the software company Microsoft in 1975 with his childhood friend ...

, who called it "one of the best books on energy that has been written." Like his textbook on Information theory, MacKay made the book available for free online. In March 2012 he gave a

TED talk TED Conferences, LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "Ideas Change Everything" (previously "Ideas Worth Sprea ...

renewable energy Renewable energy (also called green energy) is energy made from renewable resource, renewable natural resources that are replenished on a human lifetime, human timescale. The most widely used renewable energy types are solar energy, wind pow ...

. MacKay was appointed to be Chief Scientific Advisor of the

, United Kingdom, in September 2009. In October 2014, at the end of his five-year term, he was succeeded by

John Loughhead John Neil Loughhead (born 24 September 1948) is a British engineer and businessman. He is Industrial Professor of Clean Energy at University of Birmingham, Chair of the Redwheel-Turquoise ClimateTech Investment Committee, and Council member at ...

.DECC appoints new chief scientific advisor
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Awards and honours

MacKay was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2009. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: His certificate of election reads: In the 2016 New Year Honours, MacKay was appointed a

Knight Bachelor The title of Knight Bachelor is the basic rank granted to a man who has been knighted by the monarch but not inducted as a member of one of the organised Order of chivalry, orders of chivalry; it is a part of the Orders, decorations, and medals ...

"for services to Scientific Advice in Government and Science Outreach", and therefore granted the

title A title is one or more words used before or after a person's name, in certain contexts. It may signify their generation, official position, military rank, professional or academic qualification, or nobility. In some languages, titles may be ins ...

sir ''Sir'' is a formal honorific address in English for men, derived from Sire in the High Middle Ages. Both are derived from the old French "" (Lord), brought to England by the French-speaking Normans, and which now exist in French only as part ...

''.

Personal life

David MacKay was born the fifth child of Donald MacCrimmon MacKay and Valerie MacKay. His elder brother Robert S. MacKay FRS (born in 1956) is Professor of Mathematics at the

University of Warwick The University of Warwick ( ; abbreviated as ''Warw.'' in post-nominal letters) is a public research university on the outskirts of Coventry between the West Midlands and Warwickshire, England. The university was founded in 1965 as part of ...

. David was a vegetarian. He married Ramesh Ghiassi in 2011. They had a son and a daughter.

Illness and death

MacKay was diagnosed with inoperable stomach cancer (malignant

adenocarcinoma Adenocarcinoma (; plural adenocarcinomas or adenocarcinomata ; AC) is a type of cancerous tumor that can occur in several parts of the body. It is defined as neoplasia of epithelial tissue that has glandular origin, glandular characteristics, or ...

) in July 2015, for which he underwent palliative chemotherapy, a process he documented in detail on his public personal blog. He died in the afternoon of 14 April 2016. He is survived by his wife and two children.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mackay, David J. C. 1967 births 2016 deaths British physicists British information theorists Natural philosophers Professors of engineering (Cambridge) Fellows of Darwin College, Cambridge Fellows of the Royal Society Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge People from Stoke-on-Trent British non-fiction writers People educated at Newcastle-under-Lyme School Fellows of the Institute of Physics California Institute of Technology alumni British male writers Knights Bachelor British male non-fiction writers Regius Professors Deaths from stomach cancer in England Engineering professors at the University of Cambridge