David Allen Bayer (born November 29, 1955) is an American mathematician known for his contributions in algebra and symbolic computation and for his consulting work in the movie industry.

[1] Bayer subsequently earned his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1982 under the direction of Heisuke Hironaka with a dissertation entitled The Division Algorithm and the Hilbert Scheme.

He has written a number of highly cited papers in these areas with other notable mathematicians, including Bernd Sturmfels, Jeffrey Lagarias, Persi Diaconis, Irena Peeva, and David Eisenbud.

Bayer is one of ten individuals cited in the white paper published by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto describing the technological underpinnings of Bitcoin.

He is cited as a co-author, along with Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta, of a paper to improve on a system for tamper-proofing timestamps by incorporating Merkle trees.