The Nobel Prizes have long been a stimulus for light-hearted discussion on Nature Network, prompting quips, parodies and even cartoons. Of course, the IgNobel prizes are there to cock a snook at improbabe research, but here we focus on humorous accounts related to the actual Nobels.
Perhaps the most memorable example comes from the satirical pen of Stephen Curry. Around the time of the 2009 awards, he began planning his own acceptance speech for the trio of awards he expected to receive the following year.
Your royal Highness, members of the Academy, esteemed colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, it is a great and singular honour for me to accept the Nobel prizes for physics, chemistry and medicine.
In my speech this evening I would like to present a brief account of the thought processes that gave rise to my revolutionary (and prize-winning!) Theory of the Tangential Universe and to show how it finally solved one of the most enduring problems of modern science and medicine, the existence of the strange phenomenon known as the homeopath.
The whole missive can be read here, and might just scoop the Literature prize to boot.
Here’s a fun game that never really took off (yet) on Nature Network. How many degrees of separation are there between you and a Nobel Prize winner? As long as you have a publication and access to a collaborator database such as BioMedExperts it’s possible to compute your distance from any other published author. For example, you had that paper in Nature with co-author Dr Y, she published elsewhere with Dr Z, and he published with Sir Paul Nurse; hence, you are three degrees away from a Nobel winner. Try it with a laureate in your field and let us know in the comments how close you get.
Sometimes the laureates themselves take part in the fun. As first noted by Heather Etchevers, here’s a neat banner for Roger Tsien’s laboratory, reflecting his 2008 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the development of green fluorescent protein and variants:
We’ve even seen Nobel laureates immerse themselves in virtual culture. Back in February 2009, Erwin Neher and Ramon Latorre gave a talk at Encuentros 2009, a gathering of Chilean scientists in Europe. Their lectures were streamed live into the virtual world Second Life, allowing those who couldn’t attend to hear and see the talk in a simulated lecture theatre.
Finally, Viktor Poór has provided a series of ‘stripped science’ cartoons on recent prize winners.
2009 prize for medicine: telomeres.
2008 prize for chemistry: GFP.
2008 prize for physics: broken symmetry.
2008 prize for medicine: shared three ways.
If you know of other good Nobel-themed games, cartoons, quips or anecdotes, on Nature Network or elsewhere, do let us know in the comments.
Part of a series to coincide with the Lindau Nobel Laureates Meeting 2010, celebrating the values of the Nobel Prize, as covered on Nature Network.