Ig Nobels Honor Off-Beat Science

Amid a host of scientists in outfits ranging from Speedos to feather boas, the Annals of Improbable Research (AIR) awarded its annual Ig Nobel Awards to the creator of artificial dog testicles, a doctor who photographed every meal he consumed for 34 years and counting, and 8 others.

On the stage of Sanders Theatre, the 15th annual awards ceremony delighted over 1,200 people with strange and interesting humor including a three-part mini opera, entitled “The Count of Infinity” and brief “scientific” demonstrations that included the use of liquid nitrogen and colored balloons.

Even before the main ceremony began, audience members had already begun throwing paper airplanes onto the stage in the grand tradition of the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, a spoof on the annual Nobel Prizes.

By the time Marc Abrahams, the editor and co-founder of the humorous science publication AIR and master of ceremonies of the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, took the stage, the audience was already brimming with anticipation.

After the traditional “Welcome, Welcome,” speech—consisting only of Dr. Micheline Mathews-Roth uttering the words “welcome, welcome”—Abrahams officially began the ceremony by acknowledging the 10 recipients of the award, symbolized by a blue cardboard pyramid with an infinity symbol.

“The achievements speak for themselves, all too eloquently,” said Abrahams.

The awards, which aim to “first make people laugh, and then make them think,” ranged from James Watson’s “The Significance of Mr. Richard Buckley’s Exploding Trousers” to Benjamin Smith and Craig Williams’s “A Survey of Frog Odorous Secretions.”

“It’s just nice that someone thought our research would be interesting to someone else. And I suppose that’s a pat on the back,” said Craig Williams, one of the recipients of the Ig Nobel prize in Biology.

Other recipients reacted similarly.

“[I’m] somewhat stunned at the moment, amused, and a bit proud…it’s a definite honor,” said Watson, Agricultural History prize winner.

Ig Nobel winners from the past also appeared on stage to ruminate on the evening’s theme.

“I mean what can one say about infinity in a minute?” said Kees Moeliker, the keynote address speaker and a 2003 winner for his research documenting the first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck.

But rather then telling the audience about infinity, Moeliker showed a one-minute video of the life of a blackbird featuring the movie’s subject flying into a plate glass window five times in a row.

Don Featherstone, a 1996 Ig Nobel recipient and inventor of the plastic pink flamingo, appeared on stage with his wife and black poodle—all dressed in black suits adorned with hand painted pink flamingos in the shape of the infinity symbol.

“[The ceremony] was such a thrill because most artists have to die before they’re ever recognized,” Featherstone said, “I’ll take any recognition as long as I’m here to see it.”

Each Ig Nobel winner was accompanied by an irreverent slide show detailing animated drawings of the recipients’ research, 24/7 lectures—in which famous thinkers explained their field of research in 24 seconds and then in 7 words geared towards the average audience members—and other humorous non sequiturs.

In addition to former Ig Nobel recipients, past Nobel laureates attended the event, including Dudley Herschbach (Chemistry ’86), Sheldon Glashow (Physics ’79), and Robert Wilson (Physics ’78).

“I thought Bill Lipscomb in a beer bottle suit was really something to see,” said Peaco Todd, Art Director of the AIR who appeared as a “minordomo” during the ceremony.

After the ceremony’s traditional “Goodbye, Goodbye” speech, the audience expressed delight in the evening’s festivities.

“I thought it was really entertaining ,” said Sameer Lakha ’09. “The best way to describe it would just be: an hour and a half of pure unadulterated scientific fun.”