Robert J. McEliece (May 21, 1942 – May 8, 2019) was the Allen E. Puckett Professor and a professor of electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) best known for his work in error-correcting coding and information theory. He was the 2004 recipient of the Claude E. Shannon Award and the 2009 recipient of the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal. He was a life fellow of the IEEE in and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1998.

Born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Baltimore, McEliece was educated at Caltech (B.S. in 1964, Ph.D. in mathematics 1967) and attended Trinity College, Cambridge in 1964-65.

He began working at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory as an undergraduate, and continued there until 1978. From 1978 until 1982 he was professor of mathematics and research professor at the Coordinated Science Laboratory, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. During the 1970s, he collaborated with Elwyn Berlekamp at Cyclotomics.

In 1982 he returned to Caltech as professor of electrical engineering, retiring in 2007. At Caltech he won five teaching awards and advised 30 Ph. D. students. From 1978 until his retirement, McEliece consulted with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on error-correcting coding schemes. Beginning in 1997, he consulted with SONY in Tokyo.

He had three daughters and one son. He died in Pasadena, California on May 8, 2019.