Gallager, Robert G.

Robert Gray Gallager (born May 29, 1931) is an American electrical engineer known for his work on information theory and communications networks. Gallager was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in 1979 for contributions to coding and communications theory and practice. He was also elected an IEEE Fellow in 1968, a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 1992, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) in 1999. He received the Claude E. Shannon Award from the IEEE Information Theory Society in 1983. He also received the IEEE Centennial Medal in 1984, the IEEE Medal of Honor in 1990 "For fundamental contributions to communications coding techniques", the Marconi Prize in 2003, and a Dijkstra Prize in 2004, among other honors. For most of his career he was a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.