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
Department of Physics, Lund University divisions. The research areas are: Atomic Physics, Combustion Physics, Mathematical Physics, Nuclear Physics, Particle Physics, Solid State Physics and Synchrotron Radiation Research. The department also hosts the Lund Nano Lab (LNL), part of NanoLund (formerly known as the Nanometer Structure Consortium), an interdisciplinary research enivronment for nanoscience and its applications in electronics, the life sciences etc. Further research centers are "Lund Laser Centre (LLC)", "Consortium for Aerosol Science and Technology (CAST)" and "Lund University Combustion Centre (LUCC)". Manne Siegbahn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his discoveries and research in X-ray spectroscopy. Johannes Rydberg became famous for formulating