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,[1] then taught at Oregon State College at Corvallis from 1936, specialising in radio and television.
[3] Everest grew up a conservative Baptist, reading the works of Harry Rimmer and George McCready Price (although favouring physician Arthur I.
[2] Everest led the ASA through its first critical decision, that of how to relate to the pre-existing Deluge Geology Society (DGS).
Everest was enthusiastic about the DGS's ability to draw "large crowds of non-scientific folk", its offer to allow the fledgling ASA to publish material in their Bulletin of Deluge Geology until it could start its own journal, and the "dignified but definite" tone of that journal, but questioned whether it was wise to become entangled with the DGS due to what he perceived as its "strong Seventh-Day Adventist flavor."
After meeting with a group of people with close ties to the DGS, Everest wrote to the ASA executive council advising against "becoming affiliated with a deluge society right off" and that he thought "[w]e would never hope to gain even the Christian geologists if we espoused [Price's] cause."