If you are in St. Louis on April 4, treat yourself to a talk by Dudley Herschbach. Here’s the announcement from Washington University in St. Louis:
Dudley Herschbach,“Silly Serious Science: Homage to Ig Nobel and Ben Franklin” 4 p.m. Wednesday, April 4, Graham Chapel
In 2011, the Ig Nobel Award in chemistry was given for designing a method to wake sleepers during a fire by flinging wasabi horseradish at them. Goofy, yes; inconsequential, definitely not.
For the uninitiated, the Ig Nobel Awards, invented by Marc Abrahams, editor of Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), and complete with its own ceremony and traditions, appear to mock scientific inquiry. But the experiments are designed, in the words of NPR “Science Friday” host Ira Flatow, “to first make you laugh, then make you think.”
Many otherwise serious scientists, such as Herschbach, PhD, Nobel l aureatein chemistry (1986), view the Igs as complementary to the prizes Alfred Nobel launched in 1901.
As a long-time participant and judge, Herschbach thinks that science and humor have been a winning combination for many successful Americans, all the way back to Ben Franklin. Herschbach is delivering the annual Ferguson Science Lecture.