Gerrit L. Verschuur (born in 1937 in Cape Town, South Africa) is an American scientist who is best known for his work in radio astronomy.

Though a pioneer in that field, Verschuur is also an author (he has written about astronomy, natural disasters, and earth sciences), inventor, adjunct professor of physics for the University of Memphis, and Astronomer Emeritus - Arecibo Observatory and now semi-retired.

The disk had been invented in the mid-nineteenth century by a Jesuit priest (Angela Secchi) but no one before Verschuur had understand the optics underlying the measurement technique.

"[7] A thing which, according to Virginia Trimble, for the first time allowed astronomers to "measure magnetic strengths and their place-to-place variations with some confidence.

[11][12] He claimed that images from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe are not pictures of the universe in its early form, but rather hydrogen gas clouds in our own galaxy.

[15][16][17][18] His current research is conducted in partnership with Joan Schmelz, his wife, and elaborates on the exciting discovery they made that the so-called high-velocity clouds are produced by supernova events that occurred relatively close to the Sun, of order hundreds of light years distant, several hundred thousand years ago.