A wealthy businessman waged a war against gravity in the 1900s — and monuments to his crusade now remain at two Florida colleges.
That businessman — Roger Babson — was a well-known entrepreneur and economist during the 20th century, receiving an engineering degree in 1898 and founding Babson College in Massachusetts.
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According to historian Mike Miller, he eventually moved to Florida, where the town of Babson Park in Polk County was later named in his honor.
Babson ultimately made his fortune as a financial advisor and investor, applying Isaac Newton’s laws to help analyze the stock market.
However, Babson had a strange fixation with gravity — he hated it, blaming it for the tragic drowning of his younger sister as a child.
In fact, Babson blamed gravity for many problems that people had to endure.
“Gravity may be called Enemy No. 1 for those over 60 years of age,” Babson later wrote in his autobiography. “It is even being thought that there is a correlation between accidents and disease and the different phases of the moon, which, if so, means that our chances of getting hurt varies with changes in the gravity pull on our bodies.”
Despite his resentment, Babson was fascinated with Newton and his scientific theories involving gravity.
Babson dreamed of a world in which scientists could harness the power of gravity, using it to help mankind rather than hold people down.
However, scientific interest in gravity was relatively low back then, so Babson resolved to find a way to get scientists more interested in the field.
As a result, Babson founded the Gravity Research Foundation in 1948. The foundation holds annual essay competitions that award funds to scientists studying gravity, in the hopes of attracting more researchers to the field.
As part of his crusade, funds were provided to several colleges across the nation to help develop their science programs.
The caveat? These schools were asked to erect a vertical slab on campus to remind students about the importance of gravity research.
Two of those monuments are found in Florida: one at the University of Tampa, and the other at Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach.
However, they’re easy to miss if you don’t pay attention.
The Bethune-Cookman monument is located right in front of the university’s John O. Grose Science Hall.
Meanwhile, the University of Tampa monument is hidden in the bushes across the street from the MacDonald Kelce Library.
According to the foundation, the other monuments were set up at the following colleges:
- Colby College - Waterville, ME
- Eastern Baptist College - St. Davids, PA
- Eastern Nazarene College - Wallaston, MA
- Emory University - Atlanta, GA
- Gordon College - Wenham, MA
- Hobart & William Mary College - NY
- Keane State College - Keane, NH
- Middlebury College - Middlebury, VT
- Tufts University - Medford, MA
- Tuskegee Institute - Tuskegee, AL
- Wheaton College - Wheaton, IL
Babson ultimately died in Lake Wales in 1967, though his legacy still lives on.
The Gravity Research Foundation is set to celebrate its 75th anniversary in 2024, and the nonprofit is still inviting researchers to participate in its competition.
“We are celebrating our 75th anniversary in 2024. It has become very prestigious to win a GRF award or to receive an honorable mention. There are six Nobel Laureates who have participated in the competition and taken one of the awards over the years. Stephen Hawking was a big participant in his formative years in the 1970′s taking a first and third award for his work. All the award winners are listed on our website and their essays are also available for reading from 1949 to the present. The award winners and selected honorable mentions are published in a Special Issue of the International Journal of Modern Physics D with the late Editor Dharam V. Ahluwalia. The Special Issue is available for free viewing for one year after publication on the IJMPD website.”
GRF President George M. Rideout, Jr.
For more information on the 2024 competition and how to participate, you can visit the foundation’s website here.
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