It is very difficult to accurately assess where the world of science will head without the influential work from 1975 by Professor Bernard Vonnegut: “Plucking chicken feathers used as a measure of storm velocity.”
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 given 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 at the Ig Nobel ceremony, taking place at Sanders Theatre, Harvard University (USA) today.
Alongside Vonnegut, past “honorees” of the Ig Nobel Prize include the author of an impressive report on the influence 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 with the first (and so far only) documented case of homosexual behavior in ducks.
Abrahams established the Ig Nobel Prize in 1991. At that time, as an editor of a scientific magazine, he received countless suggestions on how to win a real Nobel Prize from researchers whose work had strayed too far from the scientific mainstream.
“Some of them did truly astonishing things,” Abrahams said. “It makes you laugh out loud and then it makes you think.”
Two scholars who have won Nobel Prizes 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, like at the Nobel Academy in Stockholm.
Abrahams revealed that the 2005 laureate hails from more than four continents. Additionally, there is an Ig Nobel Peace Prize, with last year’s title awarded to Daisuke Inoue, a Japanese inventor of karaoke, for his achievement of “creating a completely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other.”
T. An (according to AFP)
