David Merritt

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

David Merritt
David Merritt

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]

Awards and honors

Work

Books

Philosophy of science articles

Videos

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.


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