Sir David Robert Bates FRS (18 November 1916 – 5 January 1994) was a Northern Irish mathematician and physicist. Born in Omagh, County Tyrone, Ireland, he moved to Belfast with his family in 1925, attending the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. He enrolled with the Queen's University of Belfast in 1934. In 1939 he became a research student under Harrie Massey. During the Second World War he worked at the Admiralty Mining Establishment where he developed methods of protecting ships from magnetically activated mines. The Mathematics Building at Queens University Belfast, is named after him.