David Merritt

For the American football player, see David Merritt (American football).

David Merritt
David Merritt

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

Education and career

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.

Awards and honors

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

Work

Books

• 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

Popular articles

• 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.

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

1. "David Merritt". Physics Tree.
2. Merritt, David (1985). "Spherical Stellar Systems with Spheroidal Velocity Distributions". The Astronomical Journal. 90: 1027–1037. Bibcode:1985AJ.....90.1027M. doi:10.1086/113810.
3. Merritt, David; Ekers, Ron (2002). "Tracing Black Hole Mergers through Radio Lobe Morphology". Science. 297 (5585): 1310–1313. arXiv:astro-ph/0208001. Bibcode:2002Sci...297.1310M. doi:10.1126/science.1074688. PMID 12154199. S2CID 1582420.
4. Leonard, Peter; Merritt, David (1989). "The Mass of the Open Star Cluster M35 as Derived from Proper Motions". The Astrophysical Journal. 339: 195–208. Bibcode:1989ApJ...339..195L. doi:10.1086/167287.
5. Ferrarese, Laura; Merritt, David (2000). "A Fundamental Relation between Supermassive Black Holes and Their Host Galaxies". The Astrophysical Journal. 539 (1): L9–L12. arXiv:astro-ph/0006053. Bibcode:2000ApJ...539L...9F. doi:10.1086/312838. S2CID 6508110.
6. Merritt, David; Tremaine, Scott; Johnstone, Doug (1989). "Models of Violently Relaxed Galaxies". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 236 (4): 829–841. Bibcode:1989MNRAS.236..829M. doi:10.1093/mnras/236.4.829.
7. Merritt, David (2015). "Gravitational Encounters and the Evolution of Galactic Nuclei. IV. Captures Mediated by Gravitational-wave Energy Loss". The Astrophysical Journal. 814 (1): 57–69. arXiv:1511.08169. Bibcode:2015ApJ...814...57M. doi:10.1088/0004-637X/814/1/57. S2CID 55489594.