Gravity Research Foundation Monument

This peculiar monument was placed in nineteen sixty-two by the Gravity Research Foundation of New Boston, New Hampshire, founded by Roger W. Babson. Babson was a wealthy financier who became convinced that gravity was the greatest threat facing humanity, partly inspired by the drowning death of his sister and the deaths of friends he believed gravity had claimed.

In nineteen forty-eight he established the Foundation, and in the nineteen sixties he scattered monuments like this one across college campuses and public spaces throughout the United States, hoping to inspire scientists to find a way to neutralize or harness gravity. The inscription asks students to contemplate the blessings that might follow if science could determine what gravity is, how it works, and how it may be controlled. The Foundation's annual essay contest, which began in nineteen forty-nine, eventually attracted serious physicists including Stephen Hawking and later became a legitimate forum for gravitational research, outlasting its eccentric origins by decades.