Gravity's Sworn Enemy: Roger Babson and His Gravity Research Foundation
Tufts Monument T. JosephHow one man waged war against a fundamental force Beside the path leading from the library to the academic quad at Tufts University is what appears to be a misplaced gravestone, pictured here. As an undergraduate physics student at Tufts, needless to say, I found this monolith intriguing. Who was Roger W. Babson? What was the mysteriously austere Gravity Research Foundation? And above all, what blessings would come forth upon the discovery of a gravity semi-insulator - and what does that even mean? Mr. America Roger Babson was the quintessential rich and powerful American businessman. He was born in Gloucester, Mass., in 1875 the tenth-generation Babson born there. Soon after earning an engineering degree from MIT, he founded a financial analysis firm called the Babson Statistical Organization (later renamed Babson's Reports), which made him a millionaire within its first decade and stayed in business for almost a century. From...