Volume 48, Number 3, Fall 1999

INFIDELITY DETECTOR AND OTHER ADVANCES WIN IG NOBEL AWARDS

1999 Ig Nobel prize presenters (l to r) Robert Wilson, Sheldon Glashow and William Lipscomb

The 1999 Ig Nobel Prizes for achievements that "cannot or should not be reproduced" were presented at Harvard's Sanders Theatre September 30 by the science humor magazine, Annals of Improbable Research (AIR). The annual ceremony was co-sponsored by the Harvard Computer Society, and the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association. Marc Abrahams, editor of the Annals, was master of ceremonies.

Eight of the ten new winners-from Japan, Korea, Norway, England, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Belgium, and the US-journeyed to Harvard at their own expense to accept their Prizes from real Nobel Laureates William Lipscomb (Chemistry '76), Dudley Herschbach (Chemistry '86), Sheldon Glashow (Physics '79), and Robert Wilson (Physics '78) before a paper-airplane-throwing audience of 1200. The 1999 winners were:

Sociology: Steve Penfold, of York University in Toronto, for doing his Ph.D. thesis on the sociology of Canadian donut shops.

Physics: Awarded jointly to Dr. Len Fisher of Bath, England and Sydney, Australia for calculating the optimal way to dunk a biscuit, and Professor Jean-Marc Vanden-Broeck of the University of East Anglia, England, and Belgium, for calculating how to make a teapot spout that does not drip.

Literature: The British Standards Institution for its six-page specification (BS-6008) of the proper way to make a cup of tea.

Science Education: Awarded jointly to The Kansas Board of Education and the Colorado State Board of Education, for mandating that children should not believe in Darwin's theory of evolution any more than they believe in Newton's theory of gravitation, Faraday's and Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism, or Pasteur's theory that germs cause disease.

Medicine: Dr. Arvid Vatle of Stord, Norway, for carefully collecting, classifying, and contemplating which kinds of containers his patients chose when submitting urine samples.

Chemistry: Takeshi Makino, president of The Safety Detective Agency in Osaka, Japan, for his involvement with S-Check, an infidelity detection spray that wives can apply to their husbands' underwear.

Biology: Paul Bosland of The Chile Pepper Institute, at New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico, for breeding a spiceless jalape-o chili pepper.

Environmental Protection: Hyuk-ho Kwon of Kolon Company of Seoul, Korea, for inventing the self-perfuming business suit. [Mr. Kwon was at the ceremony to accept the Prize, and presented custom-made perfumed business-suits to the Nobel Laureates.]

Peace: Charl Fourie and Michelle Wong of Johannesburg, South Africa, for inventing an automobile burglar alarm consisting of a detection circuit and a flame-thrower.

Managed Health Care: The late George and Charlotte Blonsky of New York City and San Jose, California, for inventing a device (US Patent #3,216,423) to aid women in giving birth in which the woman is strapped onto a circular table, and the table is then rotated at high speed.n

(Based on a news release from the Annals of Improbable Research.)