David Kaiser

MIT, October 13, 12:00 pm

The Price of Gravity: Private Patronage and the Transformation of Gravitational Physics after World War II

This talk focuses on how various private patrons intervened to support research in gravitational physics within the United States from the late 1940s through the early 1960s. The analysis centers primarily on two wealthy and eccentric entrepreneurs, Roger Babson and Agnew Bahnson, and their efforts to galvanize the study of gravitation. Not only did these patrons provide generous funding at a time when the subject of gravitation received few other institutional sources of support; they also helped to knit together a research community. Yet the arrangements were far from straightforward — not least because of each patron’s strong interest in topics like anti-gravity and UFOs. Nonetheless, these unusual philanthropic efforts played an outsized role in spurring what has been called the “renaissance of general relativity” during the middle decades of the twentieth century.