This month on Oct. 15, 2025 marks the 61st Anniversary of the Antigravity Monument, built next to Andrews Hall in October, 1964. Creator of the Antigravity movement and American business man Roger Babson was fascinated by the idea of gravity when he tragically lost his sister, Edith and his grandson in a drowning incident. Babson later thought he could control gravity by waging a public war against it, establishing an organization committed to the concept of ‘antigravity’.
Eastern is one of 14 colleges who have invested in an anti-gravity monument due to Eastern University’s main campus being a gravity hill campus. A gravity hill campus is a location where the surrounding landscape creates an optical illusion, making a slight downhill slope appear to be an uphill slope. The list of the other 13 colleges with antigravity monuments on their campuses include Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois, Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, and Colby College in Waterville, Maine, among others. In return for building these monuments, schools, including Eastern, received a grant.
Dr. Freidrick Boehlke’s wrote about the purchasing of the memorial in his notes found in the Warner Memorial Library archives. “I know of no attention that has been paid to the monument at a later date… I have the impression that the school was glad to get the money [$5,000 toward the Warner Library construction fund] and did not want to offend the donor, who was the father of a student,” Boehlke’s letter said.
The Antigravity movement is associated with an award competition, the Gravity Research Foundation Awards, which is open to college students from around the world and has been ongoing since 1960. The 2026 competition deadline is on May 15, 2026. Students even apply from Eastern University to discover possible awards they might be eligible for this year. Previous first prize essay topics have included equivalence principle, de-Sitter space, and cosmological twisters. If you’re a STEM major, consider exploring some of these scholarship opportunities.
61 years later, the antigravity monument still stands outside Andrews for all students to remember the noble cause of anti-gravity.