Jose Phelps
The Ig Nobel Awards Since 1991
февраля 14, 2010
Not many people are aware of the Ig Nobel Awards, a satirical ceremony based on the Nobel Prize Awards. You can read more about it here. I have compiled a list of my own personal favorites from each year, beginning in 1991.
1991 - CHEMISTRY - Jacques Beneviste - for his persistent discovery that water is an intelligent liquid, and for demonstrating to his satisfaction that water is able to remember events long after all traces of those events have vanished.
1992 - ART - Jim Knowlton - for his anatomy poster titled “Penises of the Animal Kingdom”, and to the US National Endowment for the Arts for encouraging him to extend his work in the form of a pop-up book.
1993 - MATHEMATICS - Robert W. Faid - for calculating the exact odds (860,609,175,188,282,100 to 1) that Mikhail Gorbachev is the Antichrist.
1994 - BIOLOGY - W. Brian Sweeny, Brian Krate-Jacobs, Jeffrey W. Britton and Wayne Hansen - for their breakthrough study “The Constipated Servicemen: Prevalence Among Deployed US Troops”, and especially for their numerical analysis of bowel movement frequency.
1995 - NUTRITION - John Martinez - for Luak Coffee, the world's most expensive coffee, derived of coffee beans that are ingested and excreted by the Luak (a bob-cat like animal) native to Indonesia.
1996 - PUBLIC HEALTH - Ellen Kleist and Harold Moi - for their cautionary medical report, “Transmission of Gonorrhea Through an Inflatable Doll”.
1997 - MEDICINE - Carl J. Charnetski, Francis X. Brennan Jr., and James F. Harrison - for their discovery that listening to Muzak stimulates immunity system production and thus may help prevent the common cold.
1998 - BIOLOGY - Peter Fong - for contributing to the happiness of clams by giving them Prozac.
1999 - MANAGED HEALTH CARE - George and Charlotte Blonsky - for inventing a device (US Patent 3,216,423) to aid women in giving birth - the woman is strapped onto a circular table, and the table is then rotated at high speed.
2000 - COMPUTER SCIENCE - Chris Niswander - for inventing PawSense, software that detects when a cat is walking across your keyboard.
2001 - BIOLOGY - Buck Weimer - for inventing UnderEase, airtight underwear with a replaceable charcoal filter that removes bad-smelling gases before they escape. Also, in the TECHNOLOGY category, John Keogh, for patenting the wheel in 2001, and to the Australian Patent Office for granting him Innovation Patent number 2001100012.
2002 - HYGIENE - Eduardo Seguro - for inventing a washing machine for cats and dogs. Also, in the INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH category, Karl Kruszelnicki, for performing a comprehensive survey of human belly button fluff - who gets it, when, what color and how much. Also, in the MEDICINE category, to Chris McManus, for his excruciatingly balanced report, “Scrotal Asymmetry in Man and in Ancient Sculpture”.
2003 - BIOLOGY - C.W. Moeliker - for documenting the first scientifically recorded case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck.
2004 - PSYCHOLOGY - Daniel Sims and Christopher Chabris - for demonstrating that when people pay close attention to something, it's all too easy to overlook anything else - even a woman in a gorilla suit.
2005 - ECONOMICS - Gauri Nanda - for inventing an alarm clock that runs away and hides, repeatedly, thus ensuring people DO get out of bed, and thus theoretically adding many productive hours to the work day.
2006 - ORNITHOLOGY - Ivan R. Schwab and Phillip May - for exploring and explaining why woodpeckers don't get headaches.
2007 - CHEMISTRY - Mayu Yamamoto - for extracting vanilla flavor from cow dung. Also, in the ECONOMICS category, to Kuo Chang Hsieh, for patenting a device to catch bank robbers by ensnaring them in a net. Also, in the PEACE category, to The Air Force Wright Laboratory in Dayton, OH for suggesting the research and development of a “gay bomb”, which would cause enemy troops to become sexually attracted to each other.
Just reading some of these outstanding awards makes me want to attend this fantastically funny event, held each October at Harvard. It proves that scientists can have a sense of humor and are not always such serious-minded folks!
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ig_Nobel_Prize_winners