Origins of the Grace K. Babson Collection

Grace Babson was the wife of Roger Babson, a well known figure in the world of finance—the founder and for many years the director of Babson's Reports. Babson became world famous when he braved the tides of general optimism and predicted the "crash" of 1929.

Roger Babson often related how his ability as a financial   analyst was based on his application of Newton's "Third Law" — the law of "action and reaction"   — which he had learned as part of his training in rational mechanics as an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His enthusiasm for Newton was increased by   his awareness that Newton had combined the practical with the theoretical. For example, in addition to exploring by experiment the phenomena of light and color, Newton adapted his principles to the design and construction of a new instrument:  the reflecting telescope. Babson was able to create a monument  to Newton when he purchased and re-erected the fore-parlor of Newton's last London residence, which he found had been preserved when Newton's home was razed. This room is now part of the Horn Library at Babson College.

Grace K. Babson shared her husband's enthusiasm for Isaac Newton, and over many years collected the various editions and translations of Newton's writings, together with Newton   manuscripts and commentaries on his work or discussions of his ideas. During the first half of the twentieth century book collectors displayed relatively little interest in the writings of scientists, so Mrs. Babson was able to amass her collection of Newtoniana on a scale that would be virtually impossible to duplicate today. The Collection remains a monument  to her insight and wisdom.

The means that allowed Grace Babson to assemble the Collection had its roots, appropriately enough, in the work of Newton.   At the suggestion of Professor George F. Swain, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she and her husband Roger devised   the Babson Chart.

This tool for market analysis and forecast was a unique application of Newton's third law of action and reaction to the field of economics, based on the Babsons' belief that this principle governs "the field of human relations" as well as that of physics.      On this Newtonian foundation, they built a sizable fortune through investments and market speculation.  

Financial success made it possible for Mrs. Babson to  search out Newtoniana on a grand scale. Her growing  collection was given to the Babson Institute in 1939 and she continued to add to the Collection over the next two decades.    At her death in 1956, Grace Babson bequeathed the last of her Collection to what is now Babson College, where  it remained until 1995, when it was placed on permanent deposit at the Burndy Library, of the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — the alma mater of Roger Babson. In 2006 the Burndy Library and Dibner Institute left MIT for the Huntington Library in California.  The Grace K. Babson Collection of the Works of Sir Isaac Newton joined the Burndy Collections at the Huntington.