David Watson Taylor (March 4, 1864 – July 28, 1940) was a U.S. naval architect and an engineer of the United States Navy.

He entered the United States Naval Academy in 1881, after graduating from Randolph-Macon College where he was a member of Phi Kappa Psi.

Early in his naval career he served on various stations and in 1909 acted as chief of the navy's Bureau of Construction and Repair.

In probably the greatest achievement of his career he created the "Taylor Standard Series" of 80 models with systematically varying proportions and prismatic coefficient.

[4] Both "Speed and Power" and the Reanalysis were republished by the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers in 1998, the centennial of the EMB.

On this duty, he served under the Secretary of Commerce and took a leading part in the International Conference on Safety at Sea, which grew out of the Titanic sinking.

In January, 1917, he was senior member of the Joint Army and Navy Technical Board for Design and Construction of a Zeppelin-type airship.

In 1931, Taylor was awarded the John Fritz Medal, the highest honor of the American engineering profession, "for outstanding achievement in marine architecture, for revolutionary results of persistent research in hull design, for improvements in many types of warships and for distinguished service as chief constructor for the United States Navy during the World War."

Shortly before his death, the navy's Research and Development community honored Taylor by naming its new model basin after him.

The Model Basin retains his name as a living memorial to this distinguished naval architect and marine engineer.