A British scientist and mathematician known for two fine books, both of which are available to read online. "Sustainable Energy - without the hot air" (http://

A British scientist and mathematician known for two fine books, both of which are available to read online. "Sustainable Energy - without the hot air" (http://www.withouthotair.com/ http://www.withouthotair.com/) does the sums on sources of sustainable energy, to try to establish whether they present a realistic alternative to fossil fuels. It might make sense to read this as a companion to Bret Victor's "What can a technologist do about climate change?" (http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/ http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/), though MacKay's book mostly doesn't talk about climate change but about fuel exhaustion. "Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms" (http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/mackay/itila/ http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/mackay/itila/) is a readable and charming (but mathematical) book that touches on a lot of topics in information theory. A lot of it is over my head, but I most recently referred to it just a couple of weeks ago for its chapters about the mathematics of neural nets, including a chapter given to estimating the information capacity of a single neuron. He was only 48 and had stomach cancer, which he wrote about on his blog (http://itila.blogspot.co.uk/ http://itila.blogspot.co.uk/).