David John Wheeler was an English computer scientist and cryptographer who also worked as a university teacher.

Born in Birmingham on 9 February 1927, Wheeler attended King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Boys and Mitchell High School before going on to study at Trinity College, University of Cambridge. His education at Cambridge laid the foundation for a career that would keep him connected to that city for the rest of his life; he died there on 13 December 2004.

Over the course of his career, Wheeler accumulated a notable range of honours and fellowships. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of the British Computer Society, and he received the ACM Fellow award, the Computer Pioneer Award, and a fellowship from the Computer History Museum. Taken together, these recognitions reflect the breadth of his standing across both the academic and professional sides of computing.

Wheeler's work spanned computer science and cryptography, two fields that became recurring threads throughout his professional life. His roles as researcher and university teacher placed him at the intersection of theoretical inquiry and practical instruction, and the honours he received from institutions on both sides of the Atlantic point to work that was recognised internationally. The Computer Pioneer Award and the Computer History Museum fellowship in particular mark him as a figure whose contributions to computing were considered historically significant by his peers.