Eccentricity Entertains at Ig Nobels

Guests were greeted with an accordion sextet in lab coats and bow ties as they filed into Sanders Theatre last night for the Seventeenth 1st Annual Ig Nobel Awards.

The awards recognize unusual scientific achievement, which this year included a self-refilling bowl that induces unknowing subjects to eat extra servings of soup without feeling any fuller, to a study on the side effects of sword swallowing.

A slew of past Nobel and Ig Nobel Laureates attended, including many who have become regular fixtures at the Ig Nobel prize ceremony.

Kees Moeliker said he has flown over from the Netherlands for the Ig Nobels every year since winning in a prize in 2003 for his recording of the world’s first known case of homosexual necrophilia in a male duck. He is the European Bureau Chief at the Annals of Improbable Research, which presents the awards.

His favorite winner this year? Glenda Browne, an indexer who studied the difficulties presented by the word “the,” from issues of when to capitalize the word, to its placement in alphabetical indexes when appearing at the beginning of a title.

“It’s good research,” Moeliker said of Browne’s project, “and it’s also serious research.”

But seriousness didn’t seem to be at the forefront of anyone else’s mind last night.

Toscanini’s owner Gus Rancatore presented each of the laureates with samples of ice cream that he jokingly claimed to have been inspired by one jet-setting laureate’s work. Mayu Yamamoto said she had flown all the way from Japan to receive her prize for the discovery of a process to extract vanillin from cow dung.

In the chicken-themed “24/7 Lectures,” presenters were challenged to deliver a lecture in their field of study twice—the first time in 24 seconds or less, and the second time using exactly seven words.

1976 Nobel Laureate and Harvard professor of chemistry emeritus William Lipscomb’s speech, referencing this year’s fowl topic, read as follows: “Chicken lays egg. It’s a standing ovation.”

Fittingly, his words were met with just that.