Ig Nobel Prize

From Free net encyclopedia

The Ig Nobel Prizes are a parody of the Nobel Prizes and are given each year in early autumn — around the time the recipients of the genuine Nobel Prizes are announced — for ten achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think." The name is a play on the words ignoble and "Nobel." Sponsored by the scientific humor journal Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), they are presented by genuine Nobel Laureates, formerly at a ceremony in a lecture hall at MIT, but more recently at a ceremony in Harvard University's Sanders Theatre each fall.

The awards are sometimes veiled criticism — as in the two awards given for homeopathy research, or prizes in "science education" to Kansas and Colorado state boards of education for their stance regarding the teaching of evolution — but more often they draw attention to scientific articles that have some funny or unexpected aspect. Examples range from the discovery that the presence of humans tends to sexually arouse ostriches, to the statement that black holes fulfill all the technical requirements to be the location of Hell, to research on the "five-second rule," a tongue-in-cheek belief that food dropped on the floor won't become contaminated if it is picked up within five seconds.

The first Ig Nobels were awarded in 1991, when they were described as discoveries "that cannot, or should not, be reproduced."

The official pronunciation used during the ceremony is "ig no-BELL", not "ig-noble", but this distinction eludes many people.

The ceremony is followed a few days later by the Ig Informal Lectures at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in which laureates have the opportunity to explain their achievements and their relevance to the general public.

The annual ceremony is co-sponsored by the Harvard Computer Society, the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association, and the Harvard-Radcliffe Society of Physics Students.

With the exception of three prizes in the first year (see Administratium, Josiah Carberry, and Paul DeFanti), the Ig Nobel Prizes are for genuine achievements.

1 Tours and outreach
2 Criticism
3 Prize categories
4 Trivia
5 See also
6 External links

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Tours and outreach

The ceremony is recorded and broadcast on National Public Radio and is shown live over the Internet. Two books have been published as of 2006 with writeups on some of the winners: The Ig Nobel Prize (2002, US paperback ISBN 0-452-28573-9, UK paperback ISBN 0-75284-261-7) and The Ig Nobel Prize 2 (2005, US hardcover ISBN 0-525-94912-7, UK hardcover ISBN 0-75286-461-0).

An Ig Nobel Tour has traveled to Britain several times, and to Australia.

A recording of the ceremony is broadcast every year, on the Friday after U.S. Thanksgiving, on the public radio program Science Friday. Perhaps in recognition of this, it is a tradition at the ceremony for the audience to repeatedly chant the first name of the radio show's host, Ira Flatow.

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Criticism

In 1995, Robert, Lord May of Oxford, OM, the chief scientific advisor to the British government, requested that the organizers no longer award Ig Nobel prizes to British scientists, claiming that the awards risked bringing "genuine" experiments into ridicule. However, many British researchers dismissed Lord May's pronouncements, and the British journal Chemistry and Industry in particular printed an article refuting his arguments.

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Prize categories

Prizes have been awarded annually since 1991 for achievements in many categories. They include the Nobel Prize areas of physics, chemistry, physiology/medicine, literature, and peace but also other categories such as public health, engineering, biology, and interdisciplinary research.

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Trivia

Throwing paper airplanes onto the stage has been a long-standing tradition at the Ig Nobels. In past years, physics professor Roy Glauber has been the official "Keeper of the Broom," sweeping the stage clean of the airplanes. In 2005, he was absent because he was headed to Stockholm to claim a genuine Nobel prize in physics.

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