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Energy Insight: Professor Sir David John Cameron MacKay FRS (22 April 1967 – 14 April 2016)
David McKay, Regius Professor of Engineering, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, is probably best known to the general public for his publication Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air. After a very interesting evening meeting at the EI in 2009, where Prof MacKay talked about the research and its findings which led to this book, he kindly donated a copy to the EI library.
The description of David MacKay on the above publication’s website reads:
“David MacKay FRS is the Regius Professor of Engineering at the University of Cambridge. He studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge and then obtained his PhD in Computation and Neural Systems at the California Institute of Technology. He returned to Cambridge as a Royal Society research fellow at Darwin College. He is internationally known for his research in machine learning, information theory, and communication systems, including the invention of Dasher, a software interface that enables efficient communication in any language with any muscle. He was appointed a Lecturer in the Department of Physics at Cambridge in 1995 and was a Professor in the Department of Physics from 2003 to 2013. Since 2005, he has devoted much of his time to public teaching about energy. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Nine months after the publication of 'Sustainable Energy - without the hot air', David MacKay was appointed Chief Scientific Advisor to the Department of Energy and Climate Change.”
https://www.withouthotair.com/about.html
The Royal Society’s website describes him as “a true polymath, whose knowledge and contributions spanned important, wide-reaching areas of engineering. He made significant developments in fields including machine learning, efficient communication, and sustainable energy.” https://royalsociety.org/people/david-mackay-11864/
Melchett Award
The EI awarded Professor David Mackay its prestigious Melchett Award in 2013. Mark Height, Deputy Energy Energy World, described the talk given by Prof MacKay on receipt of the award, as both captivating and enlightening.
Taking a numerate approach to Energy. Energy World, July/August 2013 pp32-34
David J C MacKay FRS (own website)
http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/mackay/
David’s last blog posts
http://itila.blogspot.co.uk/
Biographical Information
Gov.uk website
https://www.gov.uk/government/people/david-mackay - stating his appointment as Chief Scientific Advisor to the Department of Energy and Climate Change on 1 October 2009, which he held from 2010 to 2014
Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air: about the author
https://www.withouthotair.com/about.html
Royal Society. David MacKay - biography
https://royalsociety.org/people/david-mackay-11864/
Obituaries
Daily Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2016/04/15/professor-sir-david-mackay-physicist--obituary/
The Guardian, 18 April 2016
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/apr/18/sir-david-mackay-obituary
The Register, 15 April 2016. Brit AI daddy Sir David MacKay dies: Polymath rebooted debate on climate change, co-founded software biz
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/15/sir_david_mackay_obituary/
Varsity, 14 April 2016. Tributes paid to Professor Sir David MacKay
http://www.varsity.co.uk/news/10069
Publications by David J C MacKay
http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/mackay/README.html
Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air (2009)
http://www.inference.eng.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/
The 2050 Calculator
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/2050-pathways-analysis
http://2050-calculator-tool.decc.gov.uk/#/home
The 2050 Calculator is an award-winning, user-friendly model that lets you create your own UK emissions reduction pathway, and see the impact using real scientific data.. Although hosted by DECC, David Mackay was the driving force behind this calculator.
Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms 640 pages, Published September 2003
http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/itila/book.html
Course on Information Theory, Pattern Recognition, and Neural Networks
http://videolectures.net/course_information_theory_pattern_recognition/
A series of sixteen lectures covering the core of the book
Tractable nonparametric Bayesian inference in Poisson processes with Gaussian process intensities 2009
Comparison of Approximate Methods for Handling Hyperparameters 2001
Reliable communication over channels with insertions, deletions, and substitutions 2001
Comparison of Approximate Methods for Handling Hyperparameters 1999
Low-density parity check codes over GF(q) 1998
A Practical Bayesian Framework for Backpropagation Networks 1992
The Evidence Framework Applied to Classification Networks 1992
Information-Based Objective Functions for Active Data Selection 1992
Scholarly works by David J C MacKay
https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/David-J-C-MacKay/2666207?gclid=CMqA47aJtMwCFXMz0wod280NSA
