American Roger Ward Babson (July 6, 1875 – March 5, 1967) was famous for several things, among

American Roger Ward Babson (July 6, 1875 – March 5, 1967) was famous for several things, among them he predicted and attempted to warn people about the 1929 Wall Street Crash which would directly lead to the Great Depression and contribute to the rise of Fascism.

However, besides theorising how money moves around, he had one true enemy. One so powerful he started an entire institute to study to try and fine a way to defeat. An enemy so powerful that he had three investigators permanently going over designs at the US patent office for inventions to combat them.

This enemy?

Gravity.

Following his sister and grandson both dying in separate swimming accidents, Babson felt that water gravity was the guilty party. As he stated in his 1948 essay ‘Gravity – Our Enemy Number One’,

Gradually I found that “Old Man Gravity” is not only directly responsible for millions of deaths each year, but also for millions of accidents … Broken hips and other broken bones as well as numerous circulatory, intestinal and other internal troubles are directly due to the people’s inability to counteract Gravity at a critical moment.

Applying the same methods that did him so well in the world of economics, Babson attempted to fund a means of studying gravity with his the Gravity Research Foundation (GRF), with the end goal being creating anti-gravity technology that can, for one example, end airplane crashes.

Despite Babson eventually dying in 1967, the GRF is still around, albeit only in the function of holding an annual essay competition. Previous winners of said competition include Stephen Hawking and George Smoot.