David Roy Merritt (born November 16, 1955 in Los Angeles) is an American astrophysicist. Until 2017 he was a professor at the

Rochester Institute of Technology Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) is a private research university in the town of Henrietta in the Rochester, New York, metropolitan area. The university offers undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional ...

Rochester Rochester may refer to: Places Australia * Rochester, Victoria Canada * Rochester, Alberta United Kingdom *Rochester, Kent ** City of Rochester-upon-Medway (1982–1998), district council area ** History of Rochester, Kent ** HM Prison ...

, New York. He received in 1982 his PhD in Astrophysical Sciences from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

with thesis advisor

Jeremiah P. Ostriker Jeremiah Paul "Jerry" Ostriker (born April 13, 1937) is an American astrophysicist and a professor of astronomy at Columbia University and is the Charles A. Young Professor ''Emeritus'' at Princeton where he also continues as a senior research s ...

and held postdoctoral positions at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

and the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics in

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...

. Merritt's fields of specialization include dynamics and evolution of galaxies,

supermassive black hole A supermassive black hole (SMBH or sometimes SBH) is the largest type of black hole, with its mass being on the order of hundreds of thousands, or millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun (). Black holes are a class of astronomical ob ...

s, and computational astrophysics. Merritt is a former Chair of the Division on Dynamical Astronomy of the American Astronomical Society. He is a founding member of the Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation at RIT. His scientific contributions include Osipkov–Merritt models, black hole spin flips, the Leonard–Merritt mass estimator, the

M–sigma relation The M–sigma (or ''M''–''σ'') relation is an empirical correlation between the stellar velocity dispersion ''σ'' of a galaxy bulge and the mass M of the supermassive black hole at its center. The ''M''–''σ'' relation was first presented ...

, stellar systems with negative temperatures, and the Schwarzschild Barrier.

Awards and honors

PROSE Award for Excellence in Physical Sciences and Mathematics
for ''A Philosophical Approach to MOND'' (2021) * Garfinkel Lectureship,

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

(2014)

Works by Merritt

Books

*Merritt, D. '' Dynamics and Evolution of Galactic Nuclei'' (Princeton:

Princeton University Press Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large. The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financia ...

), 551 pp., 2013 *Merritt, D. '' A Philosophical Approach to MOND'' (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press in the world. It is also the King's Printer. Cambridge University Pre ...

), 282 pp., 2020 *Parusniková, Z. and Merritt, D. (Eds.)
Karl Popper's Science and Philosophy
' (Berlin: Springer International Publishing), 383 pp., 2021

Philosophical articles

*Merritt, D. (2021)
Cosmological Realism
''Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A'', August 2021, p. 193-208. *Merritt, D. (2021)
Feyerabend's Rule and Dark Matter
''Synthese'', August 2021.

Videos

Schwarzschild Barrier

External links

H-index for David Merritt

"Dark Matter", interview on National Public Radio (8/4/2014)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Merritt, David 21st-century American astronomers Princeton University alumni Rochester Institute of Technology faculty Living people 1955 births American Astronomical Society