Michael C. Mackey is a Canadian-American biomathematician and Professor in the Department of Physiology of

McGill University McGill University (french: link=no, Université McGill) is an English-language public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter granted by King George IV,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill Universit ...

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

who holds the

Joseph Morley Drake Joseph Morley Drake (1828-1886) was a British doctor and educator. Drake studied chemistry at the London Polytechnic Institute, graduation as an analytical chemist in 1845. That same year, he migrated to Canada, where he worked as a pharmacist. De ...

Emeritus Chair.Michael C. Mackey - Professor. Department of Physiology. McGill University. Consulted 6 Feb. 2019.
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Biography

He received a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

(BA, 1963) in

Mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

from the

University of Kansas The University of Kansas (KU) is a public research university with its main campus in Lawrence, Kansas, United States, and several satellite campuses, research and educational centers, medical centers, and classes across the state of Kansas. Tw ...

and completed a

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common Academic degree, degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields ...

(Ph.D., 1968) in

Physiology Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a sub-discipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemical ...

and Biophysics at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...

. He became a professor in the Department of Physiology at McGill University, as well as Director of the Centre for Applied Mathematics in Bioscience and Medicine and the Mathematical Physiology Laboratory. In 1999, he was elected a fellow of the

Royal Society of Canada The Royal Society of Canada (RSC; french: Société royale du Canada, SRC), also known as the Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada (French: ''Académies des arts, des lettres et des sciences du Canada''), is the senior national, bil ...

in the Academy of Science. He is a Fellow of the

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of k ...

(2006),

Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) is a professional society dedicated to applied mathematics, computational science, and data science through research, publications, and community. SIAM is the world's largest scientific socie ...

(SIAM, 2009) and the

Society for Mathematical Biology The Society for Mathematical Biology (SMB) is an international association co-founded in 1972 in the United States by George Karreman, Herbert Daniel Landahl and (initially chaired) by Anthony Bartholomay for the furtherance of joint scientific ac ...

(2017). He was awarded a Forschungspreis by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at

Bremen University The University of Bremen (German: ''Universität Bremen'') is a public university in Bremen, Germany, with approximately 23,500 people from 115 countries. It is one of 11 institutions which were successful in the category "Institutional Strategi ...

in 1993, and a Doctorat honoris causa by the

Universite de Lyon The University of Lyon (french: Université de Lyon), located in Lyon and Saint-Étienne, France, is a center for higher education and research comprising 11 members and 24 associated institutions. The three main universities in this center are: C ...

in 2010 and the University of Silesia in 2019, and was the Leverhulme Professor of Mathematical Biology at

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

in 2001-2002.

Research

His research focuses on the development of mathematical models, such as the Mackey-Glass equations, to describe physiological processes at the cellular and molecular levels as well as foundational questions in physics related to the nature of

irreversibility In science, a process that is not reversible is called irreversible. This concept arises frequently in thermodynamics. All complex natural processes are irreversible, although a phase transition at the coexistence temperature (e.g. melting of ic ...

entropy Entropy is a scientific concept, as well as a measurable physical property, that is most commonly associated with a state of disorder, randomness, or uncertainty. The term and the concept are used in diverse fields, from classical thermodynam ...

, and the arrow of time. He developed, with

Leon Glass Leon Glass (born 1943) is an American scientist who has studied various aspects of the application of mathematical and physical methods to biology, with special interest in vision, cardiac arrhythmia, and genetic networks. Biography Leon Gla ...

, the concept of dynamical disease in which a parameter change in a physiological control system is hypothesized to lead to pathological behavior, and the use of

chaos theory Chaos theory is an interdisciplinary area of scientific study and branch of mathematics focused on underlying patterns and deterministic laws of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions, and were once thought to have co ...

to investigate such possibilities.

References

Internal link

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mackey, Michael Living people University of Washington alumni Academic staff of McGill University Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada 1942 births