David Wood (1920-1998) was an American material scientist.
Wood was born in Ohio. He received a B.S. and M.S. from the California Institute of Technology. Because of his interest in metallurgy, Wood was recruited in 1944 to go to Los Alamos to work on the Manhattan Project. During his time there, Wood worked on the mechanical design of the uranium gun-type bomb.
After the war, Wood went back to Caltech where he went on to receive his Ph.D. He stayed there to become a professor, and later was named associate dean of students.