The Ig Nobel Prizes
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
An annual awards-giving, the Ig Nobel Prizes were this year (1999) handed out at Harvard University on the 30th September. The awards are given each year by the editors of the 'Annals of Improbable Research' for achievements that 'cannot or should not be reproduced'. The following are a list of this year's recipients:
SOCIOLOGY: Steve Penfold, of York University in Toronto, for doing his PhD thesis on the sociology of Canadian donut shops.
PHYSICS: Dr. Len Fisher of Bath, England and Sydney, Australia for calculating the optimal way to dunk a biscuit.
...and... :
Professor Jean-Marc Vanden-Broeck of the University of East Anglia, England, and Belgium, for calculating how to make a teapot spout that does not drip.
LITERATURE: The British Standards Institution for its six-page specification (BS-6008) of the proper way to make a cup of tea.
SCIENCE EDUCATION: The Kansas State Board of Education and the Colorado State Board of Education, for mandating that children should not believe in Darwin's theory of evolution any more than they believe in Newton's theory of gravitation, Faraday's and Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism, or Pasteur's theory that germs cause disease.
MEDICINE: Dr. Arvid Vatle of Stord, Norway, for carefully collecting, classifying, and contemplating which kinds of containers his patients chose when submitting urine samples. (REFERENCE: "Unyttig om urinprøver," Arvid Vatle, Tidsskift for Den norske laegeforening [The Journal of the Norwegian Medical Association], no. 8, March 20, 1999, p. 1178.)
CHEMISTRY: Takeshi Makino, president of The Safety Detective Agency in Osaka, Japan, for his involvement with S-Check, an infidelity detection spray that wives can apply to their husbands' underwear.
BIOLOGY: Dr. Paul Bosland, director of The Chile Pepper Institute, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico, for breeding a spiceless jalapeno chile pepper.
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION: Hyuk-ho Kwon of Kolon Company of Seoul, Korea, for inventing the self-perfuming business suit.
PEACE: Charl Fourie and Michelle Wong of Johannesburg, South Africa, for inventing an automobile burglar alarm consisting of a detection circuit and a flamethrower.
MANAGED HEALTH CARE: The late George and Charlotte Blonsky of New York City and San Jose, California, 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.
Other highlights of the awards giving evening included the Heisenberg Certainty Lectures and the Win-a-Date-With-a-Nobel-Laureate Contest, in which one lucky audience member won Sheldon Glashow.
