A look at the people and the magazine behind the Ig Nobel Prizes.
Jennifer Cutraro
(Note: news update below)
This evening, science-minded people will flood Harvard University’s Sanders Theater for the yearly celebration of the Ig Nobel Prizes. Part awards ceremony, part variety show, the Ig Nobels honor dubious achievements such as the invention of artificial testicles for neutered dogs, the patenting of the wheel, and the discovery that herring communicate by passing gas.
Behind the ceremony is Marc Abrahams, cofounder and editor of Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), a Cambridge-based bimonthly magazine that, together with the Ig Nobel awards, pokes a finger in the eye of science by revealing the absurd, the ironic, and the unintentionally hilarious pursuits of researchers all over the world.
While it’s often described as a science humor magazine, AIR’s mission is to get people thinking critically about science. “If there’s one lesson I hope people will get from the stuff we do, it’s that maybe it’s okay to ask questions about something, to wonder about something, and to not take it at face value,” says Abrahams, who has a background in applied mathematics and once ran a computer software company.
Looking for hilarity
Abrahams is aided in that quest by a team volunteers who scan the research literature for titles that leave most people scratching their heads, such as “Composition, morphology and mechanics of hagfish slime.” Each issue includes an “improbable review” of the literature compiled by AIR staff.
One staff researcher-writer is Jessica Girard, a faculty and curatorial assistant at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. The position gives her access to hundreds of years of literature and scientific oddities. “Working there, you can find really ridiculous stuff very easily,” she says.
The magazine’s eclectic editorial board includes nine Nobel laureates. One of them is Harvard chemist William Lipscomb, who was a student of Linus Pauling, another Nobel laureate and an original AIR board member. Also on the board is Robert T. Morris, an MIT computer science professor who was convicted of computer fraud and abuse for creating and unleashing the first Internet worm in 1988.
The winner is…
At the Ig Nobel awards ceremony, actual Nobel laureates hand out the prizes. The raucous ceremony includes not only acceptance speeches but also a mini-opera and a win-a-date-with-a-Nobel-laureate contest for one lucky audience member. It’s perhaps the only awards ceremony in which the audience, by tradition, throws paper airplanes onto a stage filled with scientific dignitaries. Ten awards are handed out each year, some in traditional Nobel categories, such as chemistry, peace, and physics, and others in categories of their own design, such as visionary technology or environmental protection. The ceremony takes place every October, shortly before the announcement of the real Nobel prizes.
Abrahams held the first Ig Nobel awards ceremony in 1991 on the MIT campus, soon after he became the editor of AIR’s predecessor, the Journal of Irreproducible Results. “We really thought that at any moment, some grown-up would come in and tell us to stop and go home,” says Abrahams. “But no one did.”
Beyond the magazine
AIR launched in 1994 and since then, circulation has held steady at about 1,500. It’s small, but enough for the magazine to at least break even each year. “I could add up the numbers and see for myself, but it’s still surprising that anybody can make a living at this,” says Abrahams. Those numbers could soon grow, as the magazine recently launched an online version and has plans for a related TV program. Abrahams also reaches a wider audience through his weekly “Improbable Research” column in the British newspaper, The Guardian, and live shows that tour the U.K. and parts of Europe.
Abrahams comes off not so much as a science humorist as he does a science agent provocateur, shaking up the sometimes-rarefied air of academia. “Our stock phrase is that this is about things that make people laugh, and then make them think,” Abrahams says. “But what they think–that’s up to them.”
Related links:
Live webcast of tonight’s Ig Nobel awards ceremony
The Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists
Update from tonight’s Ig Nobel ceremony
Tonight’s chemistry prize was awarded to Japanese chemist Mayu Yamamoto for inventing a way to extract vanillin from cow dung. To commemorate the discovery, Toscanini’s, the Cambridge-based ice cream shop, has developed a new flavor in her honor: Yum-a-moto Vanilla Twist. The shop will be offering free samples of the new flavor starting at 11 a.m. this Friday. Is it actually flavored with dung-derived vanilla flavor? “It’s a very fine ice cream made from the best ingredients,” says Abrahams.