David J. C. MacKay

Sir David John Cameron MacKay, FRS, FInstP, FICE (22 April 1967 – 14 April 2016)^[2] was a British physicist, mathematician, and academic. He was the Regius Professor of Engineering in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge^[6] and from 2009 to 2014 was Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC).^[7] Before being appointed to the DECC, MacKay was most well known as author of the book Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air.^[3][8][9]

Sir David MacKay
David MacKay (photo by David Stern)
Born	David John Cameron MacKay (1967-04-22)22 April 1967[1] Stoke-on-Trent, England
Died	14 April 2016(2016-04-14) (aged 48) Cambridge, England
Alma mater	Trinity College, Cambridge California Institute of Technology[2]
Known for	Sustainable Energy – without the hot air[3] Low-density parity-check code Dasher
Spouse	Ramesh Ghiassi[4]
Awards	Fellow of the Royal Society (2009) FInstP FICE[2] Fulbright scholar Knight Bachelor
Scientific career
Fields	Machine learning Information theory Sustainable energy
Institutions	University of Cambridge California Institute of Technology Department of Energy and Climate Change
Thesis	Bayesian methods for adaptive models (1992)
Doctoral advisor	John Hopfield
Doctoral students	Ryan Adams[5] Hanna Wallach[6] David Stern[5] Oliver Stegle[5] Philipp Hennig[5] Carl Scheffler[5]
Website	withouthotair.com www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/mackay www.gov.uk/government/people/david-mackay

MacKay died of stomach cancer in Cambridge, England on 14 April 2016, aged 48.