Do you know the Nobel Prizes, and the Ig Nobel Prizes?

They are considered a parody of the Nobel Prizes, although there is no agreement on this. They are awarded every year in September.

They are organised by the journal AIR (Annals of Improbable Research). www.improbable.com and sponsored by two student organisations at Harvard University. The society of Harvard-Radcliffe Physics Students Society and the association of Harvard-Radcliffe science fiction.

The first (AIR) is a humorous satirical magazine about science, in which mostly fictitious, fake, etc. articles about science are published. But also real articles on science that are at least considered to be funny, obvious, puerile, weird, etc.

The two student associations belong to Harvard University together with what was the former Radcliffe College (it was exclusively for women) which is now a unit of the university.

The awards have been presented since 1991 at Sanders Theatre in a fun and festive atmosphere, with paper aeroplanes being thrown, jokes and pranks. The last ceremony, as a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic, was held by videoconference and the video with Spanish subtitles is below.

It is also recommended that you watch the live events of other years, as the video conference is not the same as the live event.

The prize consists of a diploma signed by real Nobel Prize winners and a gift according to the characteristics of the prize (some puerile, rare or funny object).

According to the organisers, the aim is not to ridicule science, but to make people laugh and then think.

To be eligible for the prize, you have to be nominated for a real research paper published in a scientific journal.

In fact, many research works that have been considered ridiculous, have later had an unsuspected development, it is well known that a bad idea in one person can lead to a spark in the brain of another person that results in the development or invention of a new and revolutionary process.

The Russian researcher Andrei K. Gueim, who in 2000 received an Ig Nobel Prize in physics together with Michael Berry for levitating a frog in an intense magnetic field (the frog was not harmed) and in 2010 received the Nobel Prize in physics together with Konstantin Novosiolov for his studies on the structure of graphene, is well known.

There are also cases such as that of researchers Patricia Yang and David Hu, who have received two Ig Nobel Prizes, one in 2015 and the other in 2019.

The 2020 laureates and the work they have carried out can be consulted at the following link here.

If we look at the research work of this year’s laureates or of previous years, we can see that there is some research that we can call, at the very least, very curious. However, even if they cause us amusement, it is very good that this happens, science can be very amusing or funny, they have a background that gives us something to think about, and of course, what one person thinks has nothing to do with what another person thinks.

Read the research papers of some of the award winners and have fun!

Written by BIOTECNOMAGO.

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