The Ig Nobel Prize winners @ Harvard

Click the medals, and then the questions on the multimedia feature above to hear audio of the winners.

I dropped by Harvard last night before the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony — a Nobel Prize takeoff that honors research that makes people laugh, then think. Most of the ten prizewinners were assembled in the Sanders Theater prior to the show, which I was told would include a “Bernie Madoff-themed cabaret” — it’s not on YouTube yet, but you’ll be the first to know when it is. The show also featured a performance from the Boston Squeezebox Ensemble, and I cannot begin to imagine what that could possibly be.

Among the winners, Javier Morales and Miguel Apátiga, researchers at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, were honored for developing a process that makes diamond from tequila. Apátiga said one experiment used 25 million liters of booze.

Donald Unger cracked the knuckles of his left hand for more than 60 years to test his mother’s theory on arthritis, and picked up the Ig Nobel medicine prize for his efforts. Winning the award amazed him — Unger said he’s done great work in his time, but this wasn’t it.

Stephan Bollinger made the trip from the University of Bern to pick up his Ig Nobel Peace Prize for research on whether its more effective to break a full or an empty bottle over someone’s head.

Katherine Whitcome and Daniel Lieberman didn’t have far to go to pick up their award for finding a spin differentiation in females that helps keep them upright when pregnant. The Harvard researchers just had to cross the yard.

The Garda Síochána, Ireland’s national police force, won the Ig Nobel Prize for Literature for giving 50 tickets to a woman whose name translates to “driver’s license” from the Polish.

Click here for a full list of winners, some of whom will be giving free lectures at MIT on Saturday.

Posted by Brendan Lynch

Tags: Boston Squeezebox Ensemble, Daniel Lieberman, Garda Síochána, Harvard, Ig Nobel Prize, Improbable Research, Javier Morales, Katherine Whitcome, Miguel Apátiga, multimedia, Stephan Bollinger, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, University of Bern

This entry was posted on Friday, October 2nd, 2009 at 10:29 am and is filed under Education & Training, Life Sciences, Manufacturing, Massachusetts, Materials science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.