David E. Meltzer received a doctorate in theoretical condensed matter physics from SUNY Stony Brook in 1985, and went on to complete six years of postdoctoral work at the University of Tennessee and the University of Florida. He then joined the faculty at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond and turned his focus to physics education research, moving to Iowa State University in 1998. From 1998 to 2005 he was the director of the Iowa State University Physics Education Research Group. He later taught at the University of Washington in Seattle and joined the faculty at Arizona State University in 2008.

Meltzer has taught more than two dozen different university courses on physics, science, and science education, and also taught middle-school science classes for five years. He has more than 25 years of experience in physics education research and curriculum development, and has been principal investigator on 11 projects funded by the National Science Foundation. He has published more than 30 papers in refereed journals, edited seven books, and given more than 100 invited presentations in six countries. He has been a consultant to the American Physical Society and the Physics Teacher Education Coalition (PhysTEC), and was a senior consultant to the National Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics.