Professor Sir David MacKay, physicist – obituary

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“It was here that the consumer could make a difference: “ ’Turn your thermostat down’ is, by my reckoning, the single best piece of advice you can give someone,” he told an interviewer. “So is ‘fly less’ and ‘drive less’. But hybrid cars and home windmills are just greenwash.”

David MacKay (with energy-efficient bicycle): ‘I love renewables, but I’m also pro-arithmetic’ Credit: Graham Turner

In July 2015 MacKay was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer, for which he underwent chemotherapy, a process he documented on a blog, “Everything is Connected”.

On April 10, just four days before his death, he posted an “open letter” to the directors of Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge in which he wrote: “The hospital is a great one, the staff are wonderful, and I’m grateful for everything the NHS does for me here. But I do have just one impassioned question and plea… Why oh why oh why does [the hospital] not have any semblance of intelligent thermal environmental control?””
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2016/04/15/professor-sir-david-mackay-physicist–obituary/

Obit quotes him days before his death: “Why oh why…does [the hospital] not have any…intelligent thermal…control?”

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