Chris Lightfoot (4 August 1978 – 11 February 2007) was an

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

scientist and political activist. He was the first developer, with

Tom Steinberg Tom Steinberg is a nonprofit leader and author, with a career history mainly in public interest technology, and in the profession of grantmaking. He is the co-author of the book 'Modern Grantmaking: A Guide for Funders Who Believe Better is Pos ...

, at e-democracy charity

mySociety mySociety is a UK-based registered charity, previously named UK Citizens Online Democracy. It began as a UK-focused organisation with the aim of making online democracy tools for UK citizens. However, those tools were open source, so that the ...

Family and early life

Lightfoot was born in

Dulwich Dulwich (; ) is an area in south London, England. The settlement is mostly in the London Borough of Southwark, with parts in the London Borough of Lambeth, and consists of Dulwich Village, East Dulwich, West Dulwich, and the Southwark half ...

, England, in 1978. His mother, Prue, was a

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...

and his father, Robert, was a

patent agent A patent attorney is an attorney who has the specialized qualifications necessary for representing clients in obtaining patents and acting in all matters and procedures relating to patent law and practice, such as filing patent applications and op ...

. His older sister Steph taught him how to program the family's

BBC Micro The British Broadcasting Corporation Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, is a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers in the 1980s for the BBC Computer Literacy Project. Designed with an emphas ...

. He attended

Westminster School (God Gives the Increase) , established = Earliest records date from the 14th century, refounded in 1560 , type = Public school Independent day and boarding school , religion = Church of England , head_label = Hea ...

, where he was part of the team representing the school in the

British Informatics Olympiad The British Informatics Olympiad (BIO) is an annual computer-programming competition for secondary and sixth-form students. Any student under 19 who is in full-time pre-university education and resident in mainland Britain is eligible to compet ...

. He used his 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 studied the Natural Science

Tripos At the University of Cambridge, a Tripos (, plural 'Triposes') is any of the examinations that qualify an undergraduate for a bachelor's degree or the courses taken by a student to prepare for these. For example, an undergraduate studying mathe ...

with a focus on Physics at

Clare College, Cambridge Clare College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. The college was founded in 1326 as University Hall, making it the second-oldest surviving college of the University after Peterhouse. It was refound ...

. He graduated with a

Master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice.

in 2000. Lightfoot was one of the founders o
Mythic Beasts
an ISP.The Times obituary
/ref>

Death

He had suffered from depression throughout his adult life. Lightfoot died by suicide on 11 February 2007.

Contributions to Internet

He played an important role in the development of: * PledgeBank, which addresses the prisoner's dilemma for all sorts of social-good projects;
YourHistoryHere.com
— a site where people can annotate a map with their knowledge of the history of that place. * Placeopedia — an online

gazetteer A gazetteer is a geographical index or directory used in conjunction with a map or atlas.Aurousseau, 61. It typically contains information concerning the geographical makeup, social statistics and physical features of a country, region, or con ...

that is a mashup of

Google Maps Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panoramic views of streets ( Street View), real-time traffic conditions, and rou ...

and the

English Wikipedia The English Wikipedia is, along with the Simple English Wikipedia, one of two English-language editions of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. It was founded on January 15, 2001, as Wikipedia's first edition, and, as of , has the most arti ...

. *

TheyWorkForYou TheyWorkForYou is a parliamentary monitoring website operated by mySociety which aims to make it easier for UK citizens to understand what is going on in Westminster, as well as the Scottish Parliament, the Senedd and the Northern Ireland Assembl ...

— tracks speeches and activities of

Members Member may refer to: * Military jury, referred to as "Members" in military jargon * Element (mathematics), an object that belongs to a mathematical set * In object-oriented programming, a member of a class ** Field (computer science), entries in ...

Parliament In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: representing the electorate, making laws, and overseeing the government via hearings and inquiries. Th ...

, including presenting an

accessible Accessibility is the design of products, devices, services, vehicles, or environments so as to be usable by people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design and practice of accessible development ensures both "direct access" (i. ...

version of

Hansard ''Hansard'' is the traditional name of the transcripts of parliamentary debates in Britain and many Commonwealth countries. It is named after Thomas Curson Hansard (1776–1833), a London printer and publisher, who was the first official prin ...

WriteToThem.com
— facilitates contacting elected representatives at all levels of UK government.
HearFromYourMP.com
— a site encouraging MPs to email their constituents.
hassleme.co.uk
— ''"Because your mother can't remind you of everything."''
DowningStreetSays.com
— searchable text of the

Prime Minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister i ...

's Spokesman's briefings. * Downing Street e-Petitions — a petitions website for 10 Downing Street. *

FixMyStreet FixMyStreet is a free and open-source software framework by mySociety which enables anyone to run a website for aggregating and reporting street problems, similar to FixMyStreet.com. The United Kingdom FixMyStreet inspired similar sites in other ...

— another map-based application facilitating citizens informing their

local authority Local government is a generic term for the lowest tiers of public administration within a particular sovereign state. This particular usage of the word government refers specifically to a level of administration that is both geographically-loca ...

of problems needing their attention, such as broken

streetlamp A street light, light pole, lamp pole, lamppost, street lamp, light standard, or lamp standard is a raised source of light on the edge of a road or path. Similar lights may be found on a railway platform. When urban electric power distribution ...

s etc.
tpop3d
— a pop3 server
vmail-sql
— vmail-sql, a virtual email hosting system backed by MySQL
Political Survey
and — An attempt to generate a multi-axis political model based solely on

principal components analysis Principal component analysis (PCA) is a popular technique for analyzing large datasets containing a high number of dimensions/features per observation, increasing the interpretability of data while preserving the maximum amount of information, and ...

of survey results, rather than preconceived axes.Connor, Alan
The new left and right?
"

BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...

" *

WhatDoTheyKnow WhatDoTheyKnow is a site by mySociety designed to help people in the United Kingdom make Freedom of Information requests. It publishes both the requests and the authorities’ responses online, with the aim of making information available to all ...

is dedicated to Chris, who thought up the idea of automatically republishing email responses * Mythic beasts (ISP), co-founder of the

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a College town, university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cam ...

based hosting

ISP An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...

. * He also did additional coding on the video game ''

LittleBigPlanet ''LittleBigPlanet'' (stylized as ''LittleBIGPlanet''; abbreviated ''LBP'') is a puzzle platform video game series created and produced by British developer Media Molecule and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Most games in the seri ...

'', which was released a year after his death. The game was dedicated to his memory.

References

External links

Chris's Blog

mySociety obituary

Guardian Obituary

Times obituary

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lightfoot, Chris British scientists British activists Alumni of Clare College, Cambridge 1978 births 2007 suicides 2007 deaths MySociety