7 months ago
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Recent reports stated that two Indian scientists had received Ig Nobel prize successful the Engineering Design class successful 2025. We cognize of the Nobel Prizes but the Ig Nobels?
As one study successful Science pointed out, the Ig Nobel prizes are light-hearted events that connection a humorous satire astir the prize. The ‘Ig’ prefix stands for a non-honourable oregon little presumption and the prizes’ sanction is simply a pun connected the connection ‘ignoble’, striking a humorous opposition with the existent Nobel Prizes, which beforehand our cognition successful science, technology, literature, peace, and economics.
These satirical prizes person been awarded annually since 1991 to beforehand nationalist engagement with technological research. They instrumentality purpose astatine probe that makes radical laughter and past makes them think. Each victor receives a azygous banknote of 10 trillion Zimbabwean dollars, which were worthy 40 US cents erstwhile they were demonetised and are nary longer successful use. In contrast, each Nobel Prize victor receives a golden medal (engraved with the representation of the prizes’ laminitis Alfred Nobel) and astir 11 cardinal Swedish kronor, divided among up to 3 laureates if a prize is shared.
Each victor besides gets to contiguous her/his lecture astatine a ceremonial successful the Swedish Academy of Sciences successful December each year. In contrast, the Ig Nobel is presented astatine a ceremonial successful Boston, Massachusetts and each victor is allowed lone 1 infinitesimal to contiguous their achievements.
Ig Nobel laureates of 2025
The Ig Nobel prizes are picked by the mag Annals of Improbable Research. According to their website, these are the 2025 Ig Nobel prize laureates: Tomoki Kojima and colleagues for experiments showing however cows painted with zebra-like stripes were bitten little often by flies (biology); Vikash Kumar and Sarthak Mittal from Uttar Pradesh connected however the acquisition of a footwear rack tin beryllium affected by foul-smelling shoes successful it (engineering plan oregon ergonomics); the aesculapian historiographer and internist Prof. William Bean of Columbia University, USA, who documented however his fingernails grew (literature); Marcin Zajenkowski of Poland and Gilles Gignac of Australia for showing that radical who are narcissists person their self-esteem emergence erstwhile told they are intelligent (psychology); researchers from Nigeria, Togo, Italy, and France for showing however rainbow lizards get a sensation for definite kinds of pizza (nutrition); Julie Mennella and Gory Beauchamp of the USA for showing how, erstwhile mothers devour garlic, their breast-feeding infants took successful much beverage (paediatrics); the squad of Rotem Naftalovich, Daniel Naftalovich, and Frank Greenway of the USA for showing that Teflon, usually utilized to overgarment room utensils, is simply a bully additive to summation nutrient measurement and hence satiety without expanding the calorie contented (chemistry); and for researchers from the Netherlands, the UK, and Germany for showing however consuming mean amounts of intoxicant tin amended the quality to talk a overseas connection (peace).
(Note: Prof. Bean passed distant successful 2020 and his lad received the prize.)
It is absorbing to enactment that truthful acold lone 1 idiosyncratic has won some an Ig Nobel prize and a Nobel Prize. This is the physicist Andre Geim of Manchester University successful the UK. He was awarded the Ig Nobel prize successful 2000 unneurotic with Michael Berry for levitating a frog successful a beardown magnetic tract utilizing its intrinsic magnetism, successful the physics category. In 2010, Prof. Geim and Konstantin Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for physics for “for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional worldly graphene”.
dbala@lvpei.org
