Chris Lightfoot

Chris Lightfoot (1978–11 February 2007) was a leading and prolific online civic campaigner and a scientist, and the first developer with Tom Steinberg at e-democracy charity mySociety.

He was born in Dulwich, England, in 1978. His mother Prue was a journalist and his father Robert was a patent agent. His older sister Steph taught him how to program the family's BBC Micro. He used this knowledge of programming to produce a crater investigation model in the physics department at Westminster which was of an extremely high standard. This was part of a physics project in which he was awarded a 15 Merit — an outstanding and very rare full mark.

He attended Westminster School, where he was part of the team representing the school in the British Informatics Olympiad. He began his undergraduate studies at Clare College, Cambridge focusing on Physics while studying a Natural Science Tripos. He graduated with a Master's degree in 2000.

Chris was one of the founders of Mythic Beasts, an ISP.

He had suffered from depression throughout his adult life. He committed suicide on 11 February 2007.

He played an important role in the development of:

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