Robert Sinclair MacKay (born 1956) is a British mathematician and professor at the University of Warwick. He researches

dynamical systems In mathematics, a dynamical system is a system in which a function describes the time dependence of a point in an ambient space. Examples include the mathematical models that describe the swinging of a clock pendulum, the flow of water in a p ...

, the

calculus of variations The calculus of variations (or Variational Calculus) is a field of mathematical analysis that uses variations, which are small changes in functions and functionals, to find maxima and minima of functionals: mappings from a set of functions t ...

, Hamiltonian dynamics and applications to complex systems in physics, engineering, chemistry, biology and economics.

Education

MacKay was educated at Newcastle High School, leaving in 1974. He completed his Bachelor of Arts degree with first class honours in mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1977, and completed Part III of the tripos with distinction in 1978. He obtained his PhD in

astrophysical sciences Astrophysics is a science that employs the methods and principles of physics and chemistry in the study of astronomical objects and phenomena. As one of the founders of the discipline said, Astrophysics "seeks to ascertain the nature of the hea ...

in 1982 from the Plasma Physics Laboratory at Princeton University for research supervised by

John M. Greene John Morgan Greene (22 September 1928 – 22 October 2007) was an American theoretical physicist and applied mathematician, known for his work on solitons and plasma physics. Education After several successes as a high school student in the state m ...

and Martin David Kruskal.

Career and research

Between 1982 and 1995, MacKay held postdoctoral research positions at Queen Mary College, London, the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques, and the University of Warwick. From 1995 to 2000 he was Professor of Nonlinear Dynamics in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge, Director of the Nonlinear Centre, and Fellow of Trinity College. In 2000 he returned to Warwick as Professor of Mathematics and Director of Mathematical Interdisciplinary Research.

Awards and honours

MacKay was awarded the

Stefanos Pnevmatikos International Award The Stefanos Pnevmatikos International Award is an award of the Foundation for Research & Technology – Hellas (FORTH) that was founded in 1991 and first awarded in 1992. It is named in honor of Stefanos Pnevmatikos, a researcher of nonlinear phys ...

in 1992. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2000. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: In 2012 he was elected President of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications.

Personal life

MacKay was born to Donald MacCrimmon MacKay and Valerie MacKay (née Wood) in 1956. His younger brother

David J. C. MacKay Professor Sir David John Cameron MacKay (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 fro ...

FRS was the Regius Professor of Engineering at the University of Cambridge.

References

Living people 20th-century British mathematicians 21st-century British mathematicians Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of the Institute of Physics People educated at Newcastle-under-Lyme School Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge Academics of the University of Cambridge Princeton University alumni 1956 births {{UK-mathematician-stub