The Ig Nobel Awards celebrate science that ‘first makes you laugh and then makes you think’
Showtime is 7:30, just minutes away, and three Nobel laureates are still missing. The others are grouped in a dim hallway outside the Green Room with sword-swallower Dan Meyers, practicing a demonstration in which they collectively will withdraw the sword which Meyers will have swallowed, thus attempting to determine how many Nobel laureates such a feat takes. Risky business, but since ‘risk’ is the theme of this year’s 19th first Annual Ig Nobel Awards Ceremony, totally appropriate. And, for the Igs, nothing out of the ordinary.
Upstairs, Harvard’s venerable Sanders Theater, normally a venue for classical music and abstruse lectures, is filling up with a boisterous crowd of (in the words of announcer Karen Hopkin) “ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, literati, glitterati, pseudo-intellectuals, quasi-pseudo-intellectuals, and deposed dictators,” who are busy folding the paper airplanes that are a staple of the festivities and enjoying the pre-ceremony cabaret. But at the moment I can’t think about them or worry about misplaced laureates. I have a more important job to do.
In 1976 William N. Lipscomb was the sole recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his studies illuminating problems of chemical bonding. Prof. Lipscomb, who has been an essential Ig star since its beginnings and remains one of the sweetest, cutest men who ever scrutinized a borane, now is nearly 90 and I have the pleasure of being his guardian angel for the show. Together with his walker we make our stately progress through the crowd and onto the stage just in time. The other laureates and the ‘Ignitaries’ have taken their places, the new winners troop in, and the ceremony begins.
The initial hoopla includes the parade of delegations, among them the ‘Museum of Bad Art’ and ‘Lawyers For and Against Risk,’ and the entrance of the King and Queen of Swedish Meatballs. Master of Ceremonies and publisher of the Annals of Improbable Research Marc Abrahams presents the attending Nobel laureates: Rich Roberts (physiology or medicine, 1993), Wolfgang Ketterle (physics, 2001), Dudley Herschbach (chemistry, 1986), Martin Chalfie (chemistry, 2008), Paul Krugman (economics, 2008), and of course Bill Lipscomb. By now two of the missing three laureates have turned up: Frank Wilczek (physics, 2004) and Roy Glauber (physics, 2005, who for more than a decade humbly swept paper airplanes from the stage). Abrahams also introduces ‘Miss Sweetie Poo,’ an adorable but relentless eight-year-old with the job of exhorting winners whose acceptance speeches run overlong to “please stop, I’m bored…please stop, I’m bored…” until they concede defeat.
Past winners in the house include Dr. Deborah Anderson who investigated whether Coca-Cola is an effective spermicide, Francis Fesmire who was the first doctor to cure intractable hiccups by applying digital rectal massage, Don Featherstone who created the pink plastic flamingo, and Dan Meyers, who participated in a study of the medical effects of sword-swallowing and who succeeds, first with two and then with five laureate accomplices in setting the world record.
Before the new mini-opera, “The Big Bank Opera,” premieres, Benoit Mandelbrot, of fractals fame, gives the keynote address. The show proceeds as an exercise in controlled chaos: Interspersed with the awarding of prizes are two ‘moments of science,’ the remaining acts of the opera, two bouts of paper airplane throwing, and the 24/7 lectures during which acknowledged experts first give a full technical description of their subject (‘genius’ or ‘nanotechnology,’ for example) in 24 seconds and then a clear summary that anyone can understand in seven words.
Also during the show is an event dear to my heart: The ‘Win-a-Date-with-a-Nobel-Laureate’ contest. I escort dapper Marty Chalfie to the center of the stage where he is enthusiastically accosted by one lucky member of the audience who has found the winning ticket in her program. Meanwhile our final missing laureate, Orhan Pamuk (literature, 2006), has been discovered in the gallery and with some hesitation — after all he has witnessed the shenanigans on stage — takes his proper place behind the podium.
However, the theatrics are simply window-dressing for the main event: The awards. As Abrahams warns the crowd, “Tonight, ten prizes will be given. The achievements speak for themselves — all too eloquently.” The winners are:
Veterinary Medicine Prize: Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson of the UK’s Newcastle University for showing that cows who have names give more milk than cows who are nameless.
Peace Prize: Stephan Bolliger, Steffan Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael Thali and Beat Kneubuehl, of University of Bern, Switzerland, for determining, by experiment, whether it’s better to be smashed over the head by a full bottle of beer or one that is empty.
Economics Prize: the directors, executives and auditors of four Icelandic banks (Kaupthing, Glitnir, Landsbanki, and the Central Bank of Iceland) for demonstrating that tiny banks can be rapidly transformed into huge banks and vice versa, and for showing that similar things can be done to an entire national economy.
Chemistry Prize: Javier Morales, Miguel Apátiga and Victor M. Castaño, of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México for their work in creating diamonds from liquid.
Medicine Prize: Donald L. Unger (California) for disproving a possible cause of arthritis of the fingers by diligently cracking the knuckles of his left hand — but never of the right — for more than 60 years.
Physics Prize: Katherine K. Whitcomb (University of Cincinnati), Daniel E. Lieberman (Harvard University) and Liza J. Shapiro (University of Texas) for analytically determining why pregnant women don’t tip over.
Literature Prize: Ireland’s police service for presenting more than 50 traffic tickets to the worst offender in the country — Prawo Jadzy — whose name in Polish means “driver’s license.”
Public Health Prize: Elena N. Bodnar (Illinois and Ukraine) and Raphael C. Lee and Sandra Marijan (Illinois) for inventing a brassiere that, in an emergency, can quickly be converted into a pair of gas masks, one for the brassiere wearer and one for a needy bystander. Bodnar effectively demonstrates the item with several somewhat stunned Nobel laureates.
Mathematics Prize: Gideon Gono of Zimbabwe’s Reserve Bank for giving people a simple way to cope with a range of very small to very large numbers by having his bank print bank notes ranging from one cent ($.01) to one hundred trillion dollars ($100,000,000,000,000.00).
Biology Prize: Fumiaki Taguchi, Song Guofu and Zhang Guanglei (Kitasato University Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Japan) for demonstrating that kitchen refuse can be reduced more than 90% in mass by using bacteria extracted from the feces of giant pandas.
All too soon it’s over.
Bill Lipscomb has granted each winner a triumphal hand-shake. The last opera note has been sung and the final paper airplane has drifted onto the stage. Abrahams closes the ceremony with the traditional, “If you didn’t win an Ig Nobel prize tonight — and especially if you did — better luck next year.”