David J. C. MacKay continued his education at Trinity College, Cambridge, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Natural Sciences (Experimental and theoretical physics) in 1988. He went to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) as a Fulbright Scholar, where his supervisor was John Hopfield. He was awarded a PhD in 1992. In January 1992 MacKay was appointed the Royal Society Smithson Research Fellow at Darwin College, Cambridge, continuing his cross-disciplinary research in the Cavendish Laboratory, the Department of Physics of the University of Cambridge. In 1995 he was made a University Lecturer in the Cavendish Laboratory. He was promoted in 1999 to
University of Edinburgh School of Physics and Astronomy University of Edinburgh School of Physics and Astronomy The University of Edinburgh School of Physics and Astronomy is the physics department of the University of Edinburgh. The school was formed in 1993 by a merger of the Department of Physics - called the Department of Natural Philosophy until the late 1960s - and the Department of Astronomy, both at the University of Edinburgh. The school is part of the University's College of Science and Engineering. Institutions and research groups based within the school include: The school is housed in the James Clerk Maxwell Building on the University's King's Buildings campus.