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

He received in 1982 his PhD in Astrophysical Sciences from Princeton University with thesis advisor Jeremiah P. Ostriker^[1] and held postdoctoral positions at the University of California, Berkeley and the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics in Toronto. Merritt's fields of specialization include dynamics and evolution of galaxies, supermassive black holes, and computational astrophysics.

Until 2017, he was a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in Rochester, New York. He was 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,^[2] black hole spin flips,^[3] the Leonard–Merritt mass estimator,^[4] the M–sigma relation,^[5] stellar systems with negative temperatures,^[6] and the Schwarzschild Barrier.^[7]

According to ScholarGPS, 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, for A Philosophical Approach to MOND (2021)
• Garfinkel Lectureship, Yale University (2014)

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