Thomas Townsend Brown, American physicist and engineer (d. 1985)
Thomas Townsend Brown (March 18, 1905 – October 27, 1985) was an American inventor whose research into odd electrical effects led him to believe he had discovered a connection between strong electric fields and gravity, a type of antigravity effect. Instead of being an antigravity force, what Brown observed has generally been attributed to electrohydrodynamics, the movement of charged particles that transfers their momentum to surrounding neutral particles in air, also called "ionic drift" or "ionic wind". For most of Brown's life he attempted to develop devices based on his ideas, trying to promote them for use by industry and the military. The phenomena came to be called the "Biefeld–Brown effect" and "electrogravitics".
In recent years Brown's research has had an influence in the community of amateur experimenters who build "ionic propulsion lifters" powered by high voltage. There are still claims that Brown discovered antigravity, an idea popular with the unidentified flying object (UFO) community and spawning many conspiracy theories.