Fairbank had, at Duke, 7 doctoral students and, at Stanford, 47 doctoral students, including Blas Cabrera Navarro, Bascom S. Deaver, Alexander J. Dessler, Allen Goldman and Arthur F. Hebard. His three sons are: William M. Fairbank Jr. (a physicist at Colorado State University and like his father a Fellow of the APS),William M. Fairbank Jr. | Physics, Colorado State University website Robert Harold Fairbank (an antitrust, business, consumer and IP lawyer in Los Angeles), and Richard Dana Fairbank (founder and CEO of Capital One). He was involved in work on Gravity Probe B.
