Karl-Rudolf Koch (born 30 July 1935) is a German geodesist and professor at the University of Bonn (FRG).
From 1960-1963 he attended a preparatory service for civil servants (Vermessungsreferendar) hosted by the regional government of Arnsberg.
His habilioration thesis was "Derivation of Green's Fundamental Formula for any one direction, leading to Integral equations and to Neumann's inverse boundary problem of Potential theory".
His work included development of Earth's gravity field models by the method of "Potential der einfachen Schicht" (single density layer).
In 1972 he was invited to teach at the Technical University Vienna (Austria) after the death of Karl Ledersteger, but he declined.
He also conducted outlier tests and reliability measures and the evaluation of satellite altimeter data to determine the geoides of oceans.