The 2008 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony
Thursday, October 2, 7:30 pm
Sanders Theater, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Click for a map and directions, or to learn how to pahk your cah near Hahvud Yahd.
The 18th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony announced and introduced the ten new Ig Nobel Prize winners. The winners traveled to the ceremony, at their own expense, from several continents. The Prizes were handed to them by a group of genuine, genuinely bemused Nobel Laureates, all before a standing-room only audience of 1200 people. Full details and action pictures will appear in the Nov/Dec 2008 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. The ceremony also included other wonders.
Click here to read the Nature News reporter’s diary of his visit to the ceremony.)
Webcast
The ceremony was webcast live, beginning at 7:15 pm U.S. Eastern time, right here:
Downloadable Poster & Program
Download your very own PDF copies of the 2008 Ceremony’s Spiffy Poster and IgBill, identical to the ones we print for the ceremony. The poster in particular is a great way to increase Ig Nobel and universal awareness among friends, family, colleagues, neighbors, and complete strangers.
Ceremony Details
Theme: The theme of this year’s ceremony is: Redundancy.
(The theme pertains to some of the goings-on at the ceremony, though not necessarily to any of the year’s prize-winning achievements).
Additional highlights : In addition to the awarding of the Prizes, the ceremony included a variety of momentously inconsequential events:
- A pre-ceremony concert (at 7:15 pm) featuring Paul and Storm
- The 24/7 Lectures, in which several of the world’s top thinkers each explains his or her subject twice:
FIRST: a complete technical description in TWENTY-FOUR (24) SECONDS*
AND THEN: a clear summary that anyone can understand, in SEVEN (7) WORDS. The lecturers and their topics:
Anna Lysyanskaya: Cryptography
Dany Adams: Biology
William Lipscomb: Redundancy
and others to be announced - “Redundancy, Again” —World premiere for the very first time of the mini-opera “Redundancy, Again” starring Maria Ferrante and Ben Sears, and pianist Branden Grimmett, with conductor David Stockton, guards Roberta Gilbert and Robert Canterbury, flutist Laura Hamel, accordianist Thomas Michel, and the Nobel Laureates, and the debut of the Ig Fife and Drum and Drum and Bugle and Bugle and Bugle and Accordion Corps. Costumes by Robert Canterbury.
- The Win-a-Date-With-a-Nobel-Laureate Contest
- Karen Hopkin, creator of the Studmuffins of Science Calendar
- Returning Ig Nobel Prize winners Kees Moeliker (homosexual necrophiliac ducks), Dan Meyer (swordswallowing and its medical side effects), Dr. Francis Fesmire (termination of intractable hiccups using digital rectal massage), and Don Featherstone (creator of the plastic pink flamingo)
- Gala Introduction of the Audience Delegations
- All speeches will be brief, and thus especially delightful
- Portions of the ceremony will be simultaneously translated into several languages, in a manner most pleasing.
- The Traditional “Welcome, Welcome” Speech
- The Traditional “Goodbye, Goodbye” Speech
- Other wondrous things.
* Time limits to be enforced by Mr. John Barrett, the Ig Nobel Referee
Radio
The ceremony was recorded for later broadcast, on Friday, November 28, the day after Thanksgiving, on National Public Radio’s “Talk of the Nation/ Science Friday with Ira Flatow.“
The Ig Informal Lectures
Saturday, Oct 4, 2008, 1:00 pm.
MIT Building 10, Room 250
77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
FREE ADMISSION — but seating is limited
A half-afternoon of improbably funny, informative, brief (5 minutes each, plus a few questions & answers with the audience), high-spirited public lectures, in which the new Ig Nobel Prize winners (and a few past winners, too) attempt to explain what they did, and why they did it.
This free event is organized in cooperation with the MIT Press Bookstore.
Special Thanks To…
All Ig Nobel Prizes activities are organized by the Annals of Improbable Research (AIR). The ceremony is co-sponsored by the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association (HRSFA), the Harvard-Radcliffe Society of Physics Students (SPS), the Harvard Computer Society, and the book The Man Who Tried to Clone Himself, published by Plume Books, New York, ISBN 0452287723.
The Ig Informal Lectures are co-sponsored by the MIT Press Bookstore.