Louis Witten and the Martin gravity institute
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 9
| Person | Louis W. Witten (born 13 April 1921, Baltimore), theoretical physicist, father of Edward Witten |
|---|---|
| Institute | Research Institute for Advanced Studies (RIAS), Glenn L. Martin Company, Baltimore; founded 1955 |
| Recruited by | George S. Trimble, Martin vice president |
| Stated aim | In Witten's words, "the discovery of anti-gravity" |
| Account given | 27th Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics, 2013 |
| Output | Papers on general relativity in Physical Review (1959) and Reviews of Modern Physics (1962) |
| Date | 1955 |
| Topics | Secrecy & cover-up (topic), Government programs (topic), Propulsion & physics (topic) |
| People | Louis Witten, George Trimble |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 53 |
| Year | 1955 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1955 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 9 |
Louis Witten, a physicist and the father of the string theorist Edward Witten, was the first researcher hired by the Glenn L. Martin Company's new Research Institute for Advanced Studies (RIAS) in Baltimore in the 1950s.[1][5] He later recalled that the Martin vice president who recruited him "had the wonderful idea which was to develop anti-gravity".[2] His RIAS work was published as conventional general relativity, and it belonged to a wider 1950s wave of corporate and private patronage for gravity research.[2][5][7]
Background
Witten was born on 13 April 1921 in Baltimore to Jewish parents who had come from Eastern Europe.[1] His early career:[1]
- Training. He graduated as a civil engineer from Johns Hopkins University in 1941, and served as a radar weather officer in the U.S. Army Air Forces from 1942 to 1946.
- Doctorate. He returned to Johns Hopkins and took a PhD in physics in 1951, with a dissertation in statistical mechanics.
- Postdoctoral work. After positions at Princeton, the University of Maryland and MIT's Lincoln Laboratory, he joined RIAS, the research laboratory of Martin (later Martin Marietta).
RIAS
RIAS was founded in 1955 by Martin's president, George Bunker, to advance aerospace science.[2] Witten described his recruitment at a 2013 roundtable, "Recollections of the Relativistic Astrophysics Revolution", at the 27th Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics:[2][6]
- Trimble's idea. He was recruited by George S. Trimble, Martin's vice president for aviation and advanced propulsion. "The vice president had the wonderful idea which was to develop anti-gravity." Witten said he balked at first.
- The ridicule. "When he tried the idea in public, you can imagine the greeting he received from scientists. So he said to himself 'those poor bastards, I'll show them.'"
- The cranks. People often came to him with schemes such as "a rock of bismuth that demonstrates anti-gravity", and "the simple ideas are always hard to combat."
- Wright Field. In a related remark he said he "got a contract from Wright Field to do it – to do gravity. Which I did, very happily."
Witten published papers listing RIAS as his institution: "Invariants of General Relativity and the Classification of Spaces" and "Geometry of Gravitation and Electromagnetism", both in Physical Review in 1959.[7][8] In 1962 came "Conformal Invariance in Physics", with T. Fulton and F. Rohrlich, in Reviews of Modern Physics.[9]
The gravity boom
RIAS was part of a broader 1950s wave of private and corporate interest in gravity:[2][4][5]
- Babson. The industrialist Roger Babson's Gravity Research Foundation ran an essay competition on gravity "insulators". Bryce DeWitt won it in 1953 with an essay dismissing the idea.
- Bahnson. The businessman Agnew Bahnson founded the Institute of Field Physics at Chapel Hill, incorporated on 7 September 1955. It hosted the landmark 1957 Chapel Hill conference on the role of gravitation in physics.
- Martin's role. Witten tried to recruit DeWitt to RIAS, but DeWitt chose Bahnson's offer. Trimble and Martin then bought a $5,000 "Founder's Membership" in the Institute of Field Physics and helped raise further funding.
- The historians' view. Dean Rickles has documented how such patronage helped revive gravitational physics.
- The press. The aviation journalist Ansel Talbert's series in the New York Herald Tribune reported Martin, Convair, Bell and others studying "anti-gravity". The series is dated 20–22 November 1955 in some sources and 1956 in others. UFO researchers later cited the coverage as evidence of secret programs.
A family website on the physicist Thomas Townsend Brown hosts a transcript of the Talbert series, but its text could not be read.[3]
Later career
Witten became a professor of physics at the University of Cincinnati in 1968 and retired in 1991. He later held a courtesy professorship at the University of Florida.[1] His other work:[1]
- Gravity Research Foundation. Since 1968 he has been its vice president and director of science affairs, the same foundation once associated with gravity-shielding hopes.
- An edited volume. It collected papers by Arnowitt, Deser and Misner, Choquet-Bruhat, Ehlers, Goldberg and Pirani, which researchers still use.
- Still publishing. His most recent paper appeared in August 2025, when he was 104.
Assessment
Witten's account confirms that a major aerospace company did set out, at least rhetorically, to pursue anti-gravity in the 1950s.[2] It also shows what that effort produced: peer-reviewed theoretical physics on general relativity, not flying machines.[2][7][8][9]
People and topics
- Louis Witten — Physicist who joined the Glenn L. Martin Company's research institute in 1955 to study gravity.
- George Trimble — Glenn L. Martin Company executive who backed gravity research in the 1950s.
- Anti-gravity — The idea of cancelling or controlling gravity for propulsion.
- Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
On the Timeline
- Project Silver Bug and the Avrocar (1955) — The Air Force acknowledges a contract with Avro Canada, later known as the flying-saucer project Silverbug.
- Douglas Aircraft unconventional propulsion study (1955) — An aerospace executive claims he worked in a UAP group at Douglas Aircraft from 1955.
See every 1955 event on the UAP Timeline →
Further reading
- Wright-Patterson Air Force Base — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Hangar 18 (the legend and 1980 film) — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Skunk Works — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
References
- Louis Witten — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- "The truth is the military has been researching anti-gravity for nearly 70 years", The War Zone · twz.com · archived copy
- "Conquest of Gravity Aim of Top Scientists in U.S.", New York Herald Tribune (20 Nov 1955), transcribed on the Thomas Townsend Brown family website · thomastownsendbrown.com · archived copy
- Dean Rickles, "The Institute of Field Physics, Inc.: private patronage and the renaissance of gravitational physics" (PDF), Max Planck Institute for the History of Science · mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de · archived copy
- The 1957 Chapel Hill conference in context — Edition Open Sources · edition-open-sources.org · archived copy
- youtu.be · youtu.be · archived copy
- journals.aps.org · journals.aps.org · archived copy
- journals.aps.org · journals.aps.org · archived copy
- journals.aps.org · journals.aps.org · archived copy
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “Louis Witten”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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