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The 20th First Annual Ig Nobel Prizes:

All speeches will be kept delightfully brief, thanks in part to eight-year-old Miss Sweetie Poo. This short video shows highlights of various Miss Sweetie Poos at previous ceremonies.

The Ukrainian INTER TV network sent a crew to the 2010 ceremony. Click on the image to see their report.

The 2010 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony

Thursday, September 30, 7:30 pm.
Sanders Theater, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts

The 20th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony introduced ten new Ig Nobel Prize winners. Each has done something that makes people laugh then think. The winners will travel to the ceremony, at their own expense, from several continents. The Prizes will be handed to them by a group of genuine, genuinely bemused Nobel Laureates, assisted by a large number of assorted Ig personnel, all before a perpetually standing-room only audience. The ceremony will include many other delights—see details below. (For the latest Ig Nobel news, see the blog.)

SCHEDULE:
6:45 pm. — Boston Squeezebox Ensemble microbeconcert, in the theater lobby
7:15 pm. — Pathogenic Bacterial Pianoconcerto begins
7:30 pm. — Ceremony proper begins

Live Webcast

The ceremony was webcast live, here’s the full recording:

To watch any of our other videos, go to our YouTube channel.

Downloadable Poster & Program

Download your very own PDF copies of the 2010 Ceremony’s Spiffy Poster, 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.

Supporters

FIGS (Friends of the Ig) — Generous supporters of the 2010 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, who are helping the world laugh then think:

Webcast Watching Parties

There were webcast-watching parties in Philadelphia and Copenhagen and other places. Thanks to Ig Nobel Global Webcast Party Coordinator Neil Gussman for coordinating them.

Ceremony Details

Evelyn Evelyn will perform a special, brief microbial miniconcert during this year’s ceremony. They will be accompanied by their bacteria.

Marc Abrahams, founder of the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, and several Ig Nobel Prize winners are the heroes in a two-episode manga published in Young Jump, Japan’s most popular manga magazine. (NOTE: manga story writer Masanori Kadowaki will speak at the Ig Informal Lectures).

Imagine every ceremony you have ever had to endure. Loop them all together, at high speed, upside down. Add ten Ig Nobel Prize winners. That’s the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony.

(Some press previews: 1, 2, 3)

Theme: The theme of this year’s ceremony (though not necessarily of the individual prizes) is: BACTERIA.

In addition to the awarding of the 2010 Ig Nobel Prizes, the ceremony will include a variety of momentously inconsequential events:

Who’s Who:

Some of the ceremony organizers and participants:

Radio:

The ceremony will be recorded for later broadcast, in highlight form, on Friday, November 26, the day after Thanksgiving on National Public Radio’s “Talk of the Nation/ Science Friday with Ira Flatow.”

If You Are Coming to Sanders Theatre…

WHERE: If you are walking, driving, T-ing, biking, or running to Sanders Theatre, you may want some directions. Here are: (1) a map and directions; and (2) the secret of how to pahk your cah near Hahvud Yahd.

WHAT TO WEAR: We suggest you wear clothing. Clothing that is, like you, colorful. People like yourself (or in some cases, very unlike yourself) in distant places, watching the broadcast and seeing occasional glimpses of the Sanders Theatre audience, will thrill to the panoply of colors, styles, and improbable accoutrements. This is the night to unearth your old wedding gown, uniform, suit of armor, labcoat or longjohns.

WHAT TO BRING: Paper, paper, paper. Paper to make into paper airplanes. Additional paper to give to those around you who may have forgotten to bring their own paper, and who as a consequence of their own neglect are forlornly wishing they could join in the thrill and intellectual romance of making and throwing paper airplanes. SAFETY FIRST, please! Paper airplanes should only be thrown at the safety-equipment-laden individual onstage who is the Designated Paper Airplane Target. Paper airplanes may only be made of paper.

NOTE: There will be two (2) designated Paper Airplane Deluge periods, one at the very start of the ceremony, the other at the ceremony’s midpoint.

The Ig Informal Lectures

Saturday, Oct 2, 2010, 1:00 pm. MIT Building 10, Room 250 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge Click here for a map and directions FREE ADMISSION — but seating is limited

A half-afternoon of improbably funny, informative, informal, brief public lectures and demonstrations:

And everyone will be available for you to talk with, both before and after the lectures.

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.

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