Eckley Brinton Coxe (June 4, 1839 – May 13, 1895) was an American mining engineer, coal baron, state senator and philanthropist from Pennsylvania.

[2] Coxe was instrumental in the formation of Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which began as a mining school in 1865, and founded the Institute of Miners and Mechanics in 1879.

[2] He spent six months after graduation in the Lehigh Valley region of Pennsylvania conducting a topographical geology survey of his grandfather's 35,000 acre estate under the supervision of Benjamin Smith Lyman.

He spent an additional 2 years studying the mines in England and continental Europe[5] and returned to the United States in 1864.

He published several technical papers on mining and translated the first volume of Julius Weisbach's "Mechanics of Engineering and Construction of Machines" from German to English in 1872.

[5] He was instrumental in the founding of Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania as a mining school in 1865 and served on its board of trustees until his death.

[11] He was strongly anti-union and defeated two powerful unions in one of the longest strikes in the coal industry from September 1887 to March 1888.

[15] He developed a long steel tape for the measurement of land by surveyors[11] and the traveling grate, which he patented in 1893.