David J. C. MacKay

Sir David MacKay
David MacKay photographed by David Stern
Born	David John Cameron MacKay (1967-04-22)22 April 1967 Stoke-on-Trent, England
Died	14 April 2016(2016-04-14) (aged 48) Cambridge, England
Fields	Machine learning Information theory Sustainable energy
Institutions	University of Cambridge California Institute of Technology Department of Energy and Climate Change
Alma mater	University of Cambridge California Institute of Technology
Thesis	Bayesian methods for adaptive models (1992)
Doctoral advisor	John Hopfield
Doctoral students	Ryan Adams Mark Davey Mark Gibbs Philipp Hennig Carl Scheffler David Stern Oliver Stegle Hanna Wallach Simon Wilson
Known for	Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air Low-density parity-check code Dasher
Notable awards	FRS (2009) FInstP FICE Fulbright scholar Knight Bachelor (2016)
Spouse	Ramesh Ghiassi (m. 2011)
Website withouthotair.com www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/mackay www.gov.uk/government/people/david-mackay

Sir David John Cameron MacKay, FRS,FInstP, FICE (22 April 1967 – 14 April 2016) was a British physicist, mathematician, and academic. He was the Regius Professor of Engineering in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge and from 2009 to 2014 was Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). MacKay was well known as author of the book Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air.

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, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Natural Sciences (Experimental and theoretical physics) in 1988. He went to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) as a Fulbright Scholar, where his supervisor was John Hopfield. He was awarded a PhD in 1992.

In January 1992 MacKay was appointed the Royal Society Smithson Research Fellow at Darwin College, Cambridge, continuing his cross-disciplinary research in the Cavendish Laboratory, 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 and in 2013 to the post of Regius Professorship of Engineering.