David Merritt
David Merritt

David Roy Merritt (born November 16, 1955, in Los Angeles) is an Americanastrophysicist.

He received in 1982 his PhD in Astrophysical Sciences fromPrinceton University with thesis advisorJeremiah P. Ostriker^[1] and held postdoctoral positions at theUniversity of California, Berkeley and theCanadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics inToronto. Merritt's fields of specialization include dynamics and evolution ofgalaxies,supermassive black holes, and computational astrophysics.

Until 2017, he was a professor at theRochester Institute of Technology (RIT) inRochester,New York. He was a former Chair of theDivision on Dynamical Astronomy of theAmerican Astronomical Society. He is a founding member of theCenter for Computational Relativity and Gravitation at RIT.

His scientific contributions includeOsipkov–Merritt models,^[2] black holespin flips,^[3] theLeonard–Merritt mass estimator,^[4] theM–sigma relation,^[5] stellar systems with negative temperatures,^[6] and the Schwarzschild Barrier.^[7]

According toScholarGPS, David Merritt is placed among the top 0.05% of all scholars worldwide based on his prolific publication record and the high impact of his work.

• PROSE Award for Excellence in Physical Sciences and Mathematics, forA Philosophical Approach to MOND (2021)
• Garfinkel Lectureship,Yale University (2014)

• Merritt, D.Dynamics and Evolution of Galactic Nuclei (Princeton:Princeton University Press), 551 pp., 2013
• Merritt, D.A Philosophical Approach to MOND (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press), 282 pp., 2020
• Parusniková, Z. and Merritt, D. (Eds.)Karl Popper's Science and Philosophy (Berlin: Springer International Publishing), 383 pp., 2021

• Merritt, D. (2023).Touching Reality.
• Merritt, D. (2021).A Non-Standard Model.Aeon, July 2021.
• Ferrarese, L. and Merritt, D. (2002).Supermassive Black Holes.Physics World, June 2002, p. 41.

• Merritt, D. (2022).The scientific method from a philosophical perspective. doi/10.5281/zenodo.6336021
• Merritt, D. (2021).Cosmological Realism.Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 88, p. 193-208.
• Merritt, D. (2021).Feyerabend's Rule and Dark Matter.Synthese, 199, p. 8921–8942.

• Schwarzschild Barrier

• H-index for David Merritt
• "Dark Matter", interview on National Public Radio (8/4/2014)

• 21st-century American astronomers
• Princeton University alumni
• Rochester Institute of Technology faculty
• Living people
• 1955 births
• American Astronomical Society

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