Derek John de Solla Price was a British physicist, historian of science, and information scientist. He was known for his investigation of the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient Greek planetary computer, and for quantitative studies on scientific publications, which led to his being described as the "Herald of scientometrics".

Dikken Zwilgmeyer was a Norwegian fiction writer. She is most noted for her children's literature and for her "Inger Johanne" series of books.

Dinabandhu Mitra was a Bengali writer and dramatist. He is notable for his play Nil Darpan (1860).

Diogenes Laërtius was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Nothing is definitively known about his life, but his surviving Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is a principal source for the history of ancient Greek philosophy. His reputation is controversial among scholars because he often repeats information from his sources without critically evaluating it. He also frequently focuses on trivial or insignificant details of his subjects' lives while ignoring important details of their philosophical teachings and he sometimes fails to distinguish between earlier and later teachings of specific philosophical schools. However, unlike many other ancient secondary sources, Diogenes Laërtius generally reports philosophical teachings without attempting to reinterpret or expand on them, which means his accounts are often closer to the primary sources. Due to the loss of so many of the primary sources on which Diogenes relied, his work has become the foremost surviving source on the history of Greek philosophy.

Dionysius Lardner "Dion" Boucicault was an Irish actor and playwright famed for his melodramas. By the later part of the 19th century, Boucicault had become known on both sides of the Atlantic as one of the most successful actor-playwright-managers then in the English-speaking theatre. Although The New York Times hailed him in his obituary as "the most conspicuous English dramatist of the 19th century," he and his second wife, Agnes Robertson Boucicault, had applied for and received American citizenship in 1873.

Dionysius Lardner FRS FRSE was an Irish scientific writer who popularised science and technology, and edited the 133-volume Cabinet Cyclopædia.

Dixon Cowie Scott was an English journalist and novelist from South Shields, Tyne and Wear. His first novel, Jolly Jack Tart, appeared in 1974, inspired by his time in the Royal Navy and the Minesweepers.

Djuna Barnes was an American artist, illustrator, journalist, and writer who is perhaps best known for her novel Nightwood (1936), a cult classic of lesbian fiction and an important work of modernist literature.

Jonah LeRoy "Doane" Robinson was an American historian who was the state historian of South Dakota. He is known for conceiving of the idea for the Mount Rushmore National Memorial in the Black Hills, which he believed would stimulate tourism to the area.

Donald Robert Perry Marquis was an American humorist, journalist, and author. He was variously a novelist, poet, newspaper columnist, and playwright. He is remembered best for creating the characters Archy and Mehitabel, supposed authors of humorous verse. During his lifetime he was equally famous for creating another fictitious character, "the Old Soak," who was the subject of two books, a hit Broadway play (1922–23), a silent film (1926) and a talkie (1937).