Merrill was born in New York City, the son of Doctor Frederick Hamilton Merrill and Joan Williams Merrill. He was the adoptive grandson of Richard Billings (son of Frederick H Billings), and the grandson of Norman Williams of the family that donated the library in Woodstock, Vermont.
They made their home in Woodside, California. Merrill earned a master"s degree in electrical engineering from Dartmouth College, and worked for National Semiconductor from 1980. He invented the "vertical color filter" technology of the Foveon X3 sensor that is at the heart of the novel digital cameras sold by Sigma Corporation (the SD9, SD10, SD14, DP1, DP2 and DP3).
Merrill"s vertical color filter invention was originally based on a triple-well Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor Dynamic random-access memory process.
He later refined the idea using multiple epitaxially grown silicon layers for each of the vertically stacked color-detecting photodiodes. According to Carver Mead, Merrill was "the most creative engineer I have ever metropolitan" Merrill explained his inventive process this way, "There"s a lot you can get in this world just by looking for symmetry, looking for patterns;" and "Look for a technological trend in one area and apply it to another."
On February 8, 2012, Doctor Merrill is honored by business partner Sigma Corporation by renaming Sigma"s flagship DSLR SD1 to SD1 Merrill.
Sigma SD1 utilizes the latest Foveon image sensor.
He was a founder of Foveon in 1997, and worked there until his death from cancer in 2008. Merrill shared the Royal Photographic Society"s Progress Medal in 2005 with Dick Lyon and Carver Mead for the development of the Foveon X3 technology. Shortly before his death in 2008, he received the Kosar Memorial Award, "for significant contributions to an unconventional photographic system," from the Society for Imaging Science and Technology.
