C. W. Francis Everitt (born 8 March 1934) is a US-based English physicist working on experimental testing of

general relativity General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics ...

. Everitt was educated at

Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

and the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest- ...

in low-temperature physics. He is

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professo ...

at the Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory of

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

and is also an Associate Member of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC). Everitt is

Principal Investigator In many countries, the term principal investigator (PI) refers to the holder of an independent grant and the lead researcher for the grant project, usually in the sciences, such as a laboratory study or a clinical trial. The phrase is also often u ...

of the Gravity Probe B mission mainly aimed to test frame-dragging at an expected accuracy of 1%. According to

, it is an effect induced by the rotation of the

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's sur ...

on orbiting

gyroscopes A gyroscope (from Ancient Greek γῦρος ''gŷros'', "round" and σκοπέω ''skopéō'', "to look") is a device used for measuring or maintaining orientation and angular velocity. It is a spinning wheel or disc in which the axis of rot ...

. Everitt spent more than 40 years on the project and was awarded with the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal. The results were published in Physical Review Letters in May 2011. The results confirm general relativity's predictions, though not to the project's ambitious goal of 1% precision. In 1985, along with

Remo Ruffini Remo Ruffini (born May 17, 1942, La Brigue, Alpes-Maritimes, at that time, Briga Marittima, Italy). He is the Director of ICRANet, International Centre for Relativistic Astrophysics Network and the President of the International Centre for Rela ...

Riccardo Giacconi Riccardo Giacconi ( , ; October 6, 1931 – December 9, 2018) was an Italian-American Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist who laid down the foundations of X-ray astronomy. He was a professor at the Johns Hopkins University. Biography Born ...

Abdus Salam Mohammad Abdus Salam Salam adopted the forename "Mohammad" in 1974 in response to the anti-Ahmadiyya decrees in Pakistan, similarly he grew his beard. (; ; 29 January 192621 November 1996) was a Punjabis, Punjabi Pakistani theoretical physici ...

, Paul Boynton, George Coyne, and Fang Li-Zhi, Professor Everitt co-founded the

International Center for Relativistic Astrophysics ICRA, the International Center for Relativistic Astrophysics is an international research institute for relativistic astrophysics and related areas. Its members are seven Universities and four organizations. The center is located in Rome, Italy. ...

. Everitt is the current Chairman of the

ICRANet ICRANet, the International Center for Relativistic Astrophysics Network, is an international organization which promotes research activities in relativistic astrophysics and related areas. Its members are four countries and three Universities an ...

Steering Committee for the

Center at the Leland Stanford Junior University.

Bibliometric information

As of November 2013, according to the

NASA ADS The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is an online database of over 16 million astronomy and physics papers from both peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed sources. Abstracts are available free online for almost all articles, and full scanned a ...

database, the

h-index The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with obvious success indicators such as ...

of C.W.F. Everitt is 18, with a total number of citations (self-citations excluded) of about 900. The tori index and the riq index are 12.1 and 62, respectively.

References

External links

Prof. Everitt webpageGravity Probe B homepage
1934 births Living people English physicists Alumni of Imperial College London Stanford University Department of Physics faculty {{UK-physicist-stub