Robert J. McEliece 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 and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1998.