F. Alton Everest

F. Alton Everest (1909–2005) was an American acoustical engineer, a cofounder of the American Scientific Affiliation, and its first president.

Academic and acoustic research career He held electrical engineering degrees from Oregon State and Stanford University, where he conducted his early work with such prominent engineers as Lee DeForest (inventor of the triode vacuum tube) and Hewlett Packard founders William Hewlett and David Packard, then taught at Oregon State College at Corvallis from 1936, specialising in radio and television.

During World War II he headed a National Defense Research Committee underwater sound research team.

American Scientific Affiliation Everest grew up a conservative Baptist, reading the works of Harry Rimmer and George McCready Price (although favouring physician Arthur I. Brown as an influence on the relationship between science and religion). The influence of flood geology on the ASA was finally exorcised when, in 1948, Everest approached J. Laurence Kulp to explore the topic in the ASA's upcoming annual convention. Kulp presented a paper on the Antiquity of Hominoid Fossils at this convention and on Deluge Geology at the next convention, resulting in the discomfiture and isolation of Flood Geologists within the ASA.

In 1996 he was nominated for the Templeton Prize by a fellow member of the American Scientific Affiliation.