The Art of Keeping Objects in the Air

In high school, Arthur Lewbel ’78, PhD ’84, became interested in magic. He read every magic book in his local library, and when he got to the end of the shelf, he picked up a book about how to juggle. That began a lifelong hobby. It would also be the start of what grew into the MIT Juggling Club—the oldest continuously operating juggling club in the world.

Informally founded by Lewbel in the spring of 1975, the club was officially recognized as an MIT student organization in the 1975–’76 academic year. Having started in partnership with a unicycle club that is no longer in operation, it soon became popular on its own.

What has made the club successful for so long? Lewbel gives some credit to the consistent meeting time. It’s always been Sundays from 3 to 5 p.m. in Lobby 10 (or outside in Killian Court when weather allows)—and he predicts it always will be. But timing aside, he thinks there’s more to why people stick around.

“There are some people that are diehard in their dedication to juggling and to the club,” says Lewbel. “MIT people will latch on to something and work on it forever. I think that’s partly kind of an MIT trait—that you get ahold of something, and you don’t let it go.”

Still, the club’s endurance has been a surprise to Lewbel. “I am stunned and amazed,” he says of reaching the 50-year milestone. “I did not think about it lasting forever when we started it, and it just amazes me that it’s still there.”

So what does a juggling club do? Largely, members juggle. They practice skills together and individually. They also help newcomers learn the craft: “Almost every week, one or two people wander past, get interested, and anyone in the club will stop what they’re doing to show someone the basics. Most of them we never see again, but some get interested and stay with it.”

Lewbel has stayed with it—continuing to attend the meetings since his student days. And there are several other alums from decades past who also attend regularly. “As long as I am in town on a Sunday afternoon, I go to the juggling club,” he says. “I’ve never stopped going.”

Lewbel is so passionate about the subject that he cowrote a Scientific American article on the science of juggling, as well as an article on its history. He also holds a Guinness World Record with past club president David Rush ’07 for the most consecutive side-by-side juggling catches by a team of two. In most partner juggling, the partners face each other; their feat involved passing balls back and forth while standing shoulder to shoulder. “We actually set it twice,” says Lewbel. “Someone broke it, so we had to break it again. Rush came by MIT, and we spent one club session trying until we got it.” The pair’s record stands at 914.

Why Juggling?

While juggling dates back to at least 1781 BCE, the date of an early depiction of Egyptian women doing it, the science and mathematics involved first became areas of interest in the 1970s and ’80s. At MIT, Professor Claude E. Shannon created juggling machines and formulated a mathematical juggling theorem, and Professor Seymour Papert and other computing researchers working on Project MAC investigated how people master the art.

If you’ve never juggled before, you might think it just involves keeping as many objects as possible in the air—but there’s a lot more to it than that, says Cole Perkinson, PhD ’23, president of the MIT Juggling Club from 2015 to 2022.

“Even if you ask a juggler, they struggle to define what juggling is,” says Perkinson. “I think it’s really any form of creative object manipulation. Each person is kind of drawn to their own aspect of that as an art form and as their own physical capabilities and interests dictate.”

For Perkinson, who has been an avid juggler since he was a child, MIT’s many student organizations—this one in particular—were among the perks of coming to the Institute. As president of the club, he helped organize workshops, festivals, and more, including educational events for local K–12 STEM groups. (Although the MIT Juggling Club is based at the Institute, it has always had a strong cohort of other local jugglers, making it a club for the broader community as well.)

While Perkinson was working toward his PhD, he found juggling to be a reassuring constant. “After a day of eight to 12 hours in a dark spectroscopy room playing with lasers, it was nice to step out into the sunlight of Killian Court or into Lobby 10 and engage with a lot of different people,” he says. “I especially loved partner juggling with two or more people. The patterns you can do become exponentially more complex as you add more people. It was always an activity that helped ground me [in] the community, and I always emerged from the juggling club feeling better.”

That hasn’t changed for Perkinson, who returns to juggle on Sundays when he can. “It’s a great excuse to see familiar faces,” he says. “It doesn’t feel different coming back—it just feels like the same welcoming group that wants to throw objects all [afternoon] long.”

The Benefits of Throwing Balls

While many may not see the point of juggling, Perkinson says that he has seen a lot of benefits.

“I think my visual processing is a lot faster than it would have been otherwise,” he explains. “Juggling builds focus and mental acuity—being able to pay attention to several moving objects at once. You can’t really focus on one of them; otherwise you forget the others. You have to get in this sort of heightened mental state. Also, whenever I see something falling, without thinking I grab it, so I’ve saved a lot of dishware that way! It’s also just plain fun.”

Current co-presidents Yue Chen Li ’26 and Vasu Kaker ’25 agree. “There have been studies that show it improves your gray matter, your attention, your ability to concentrate,” says Kaker. “There’s almost an infinite number of things you can do with just three balls. And of course, as you add on more and more props, there are even cooler things you can do.”

For Li, who had only juggled diabolos (also known as Chinese yo-yos) before coming to MIT, learning this new skill had the added benefit of exposing him to the community that the club has fostered over the decades. “A few of the regular members helped teach me the basics in the beginning,” he says. “I didn’t expect that I would enjoy it so much and keep coming back, but it’s become a huge part of my time at MIT. I like coming to practice and seeing faces I know and connecting with the people that I’ve built relationships with, including many of the regular members who have been coming for years.”

To celebrate 50 years of juggling at MIT, current students and longtime members of the MIT Juggling Club are working together on plans to turn their observance of the next World Juggling Day—June 14—into an extra-special event. Visit web.mit.edu/juggle/www/ for additional information.

Photo (top): David Rush ’07 juggles 14-inch knives while balancing on a board and a piece of PVC pipe at MIT Juggle Mania in March 2006. Credit: Eric Schmiedl '09.

This story also appears in the March/April issue of MIT Alumni News magazine, published by MIT Technology Review.