David Roy Merritt (born November 16, 1955, in Los Angeles) is an American astrophysicist. He is known for Osipkov–Merritt model, the Leonard–Merritt mass estimator and 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 present ...

Education and career

He received in 1982 his PhD in Astrophysical Sciences from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

with thesis advisor Jeremiah P. Ostriker and held postdoctoral positions at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

and the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics in

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

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

galaxies A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, and dark matter bound together by gravity. The word is derived from the Greek ' (), literally 'milky', a reference to the Milky Way galaxy that contains the Solar Sys ...

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 ...

s, and computational astrophysics. Until 2017, he was a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in Rochester,

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

. He was a former Chair of the Division on Dynamical Astronomy of the

American Astronomical Society The American Astronomical Society (AAS, sometimes spoken as "double-A-S") is an American society of professional astronomers and other interested individuals, headquartered in Washington, DC. The primary objective of the AAS is to promote the adv ...

. 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

, 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 Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

(2014)

Work

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 financial ...

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

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press was the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted a letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it was the oldest university press in the world. Cambridge University Press merged with Cambridge Assessme ...

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

Philosophy of science articles

*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.

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