It is very challenging to accurately assess where the world of science will head without the influential work of Professor Bernard Vonnegut from 1975: “Chicken Feather Removal as a Measure of Hurricane Speed”.
One thing is clear: Vonnegut’s groundbreaking research may have faded from the memory of many, but not for Marc Abrahams, the founder of the Ig Nobel Prize – an annual award for scientific achievements that “cannot or should not be reproduced”.
The true Nobel laureates will assist the organizers in presenting these “reluctant” awards in a grand, chaotic manner with paper airplanes fluttering down during the Ig Nobel ceremony, held today at Sanders Theatre, Harvard University (USA).
Alongside Vonnegut, those who have been “honored” with the Ig Nobel Prize include authors of an impressive report on the impact of country music on suicide rates, the use of magnets to make frogs fly, and the effects of beer, garlic, and spoiled cream on the appetite of leeches.
The keynote speech tonight will be delivered by the recipient of the 2003 Ig Nobel Prize in Biology – Kees Moeliker – who won for the first (and so far only) documented case of homosexuality in wild ducks.
Abrahams established the Ig Nobel Prize in 1991. At that time, as an editor of a scientific magazine, he received numerous suggestions on how to win a real Nobel Prize from researchers whose work had strayed too far from the mainstream scientific flow.
“Some of them did truly astonishing things,” Abrahams said. “It makes you laugh out loud and then makes you think.”
Two scholars, who are Nobel laureates in Physics and Chemistry, will present 10 Ig Nobel Prizes in fields such as Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, with the identities of the winners kept secret under the best conditions, similar to the Nobel Academy in Stockholm.
Abrahams only revealed that the 2005 winner came from over four continents. Additionally, there is an Ig Nobel Peace Prize, which last year’s title was awarded to Daisuke Inoue, a Japanese inventor of karaoke, for the achievement of “opening up a completely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other.”
T. An (according to AFP)
