Francis Everitt

Who is Francis Everitt?

C. W. Francis Everitt is a US-based English physicist working on experimental testing of general relativity. Everitt was educated at Imperial College London and the University of Pennsylvania in low-temperature physics. He is Professor at the Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory of Stanford University and is also an Associate Member of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology.

Everitt is Principal Investigator of the Gravity Probe B mission mainly aimed to test frame-dragging at an expected accuracy of 1%. According to general relativity, it is an effect induced by the rotation of the Earth on orbiting gyroscopes. 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.