The 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Ceremony

The 2024 Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded at the 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, on Thursday evening, September 12, 2024, at MIT (The Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After four pandemic-years in which the ceremony happened only online, this resumed the tradition of doing it with everyone together in a big room with an audience. The ceremony, as per tradition, also was webcast. We produced the ceremony in collaboration with the MIT Press:

This Year’s Ceremony (and webcast)

Thursday evening, September 12, 2024
in MIT building 10 room 250

The webcast was in English. There also was a Japanese-language-captioned webcast.

Enjoy browsing a few of the many intriguing press accounts of the ceremony and winners: Science (and also this) and AAAS Science Adviser, New York Times (and also this), NHK World, Associated Press, Dagens Nyheter, Straight Arrow News, Velike Price, Sveriges Radio, The Project, Jamuna TV, Cambridge Day, Global News, Thai PBS (and also this), Presencia Universitaria, Bright Spots, ABC News, Galileo, Depths of Wikipedia, Telemundo, Gigazine, The Tartan, N+1, Bloomberg Adria, Naukas, El Espagnol, Daily Mail, Weser Kurier, AFOPTIC, etc. (Nature interviewed [and also made a podcast about] some past Ig winners about how the prize has affected their careers. CNRS interviewed some of the past Ig winners in France. Other such interviews can be found by scouting through the vastness of the internet…)

Here is the Japanese-language webcast of the ceremony:

Two days later, on Saturday afternoon, September 14, in a public event called “Ig Nobel Face-to-Face“, at the MIT Museum, the new winners asked each other questions about their work.

Another Ig Nobel Face-to-Face event happened on Sunday November 17, 2024, at the Miraikan science museum in Tokyo, Japan. Here are some video glimpses of that event.

Ig Nobel Face-to-Face 2024
(Saturday, September 14, 2024 in the MIT Museum, in three chunks)

The ceremony had a companion event called Ig Nobel Face-to-Face. The new Ig Nobel Prize winners asked each other questions about their work, and answered questions from the audience.

WHERE/WHEN: Ig Nobel Face-to-Face happened in the MIT Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, on Saturday, September 14, 2024. This was actually three brief events, each lasting 30 minutes or so. Sessions began at 12:30 pm, 2:00 pm, and 3:00 pm.

CONVERSATIONS: In each session, a different set of three or four winners were in conversation (the other winners were sitting with the audience).

Video of the First Session at MIT (of 3)

The people and topics in this first session:

  • PEACE PRIZE: Pigeons as missile navigators (Julie Skinner Vargas, accepting on behalf of her father, the late B.F. Skinner)
  • PHYSICS PRIZE: How dead trout swim upstream (Jimmy Liao)
  • DEMOGRAPHY PRIZE: The not-so-long lives of super-centenarians (Saul Justin Newman)

Introductory remarks: Kate Silverman Wilson, MIT Museum
Discussion host: Marc Abrahams
Bananas: Kees Moeliker, Becky Moon
Kiyoshi Furusawa: Himself [Note: Kiyoshi Furusawa was the host of a Face-To-Face event in Tokyo, Japan, at the Miraikan science museum, on November 17, 2024.]

A second Face-to-Face event happened in November, in Tokyo, Japan, at the Miraikan science museum, on November 17. Here is video of the Tokyo event:

Video of the Second Session at MIT (of 3)

The people and topics in the second session:

  • ANATOMY PRIZE: Hemispheric hair swirls, clockwise or anti-clockwise? (Roman Khonsari)
  • PROBABILITY PRIZE: Heads or tails, evidence after 350,757 coin flips (Eric-Jan Wagenmakers and a cameo by František Bartoš)
  • CHEMISTRY PRIZE: Chromatographic separation of drunk and sober worms (Sander Woutersen)

Introductory remarks: Kate Silverman Wilson, MIT Museum
Discussion host: Karen Hopkin
Bananas: Becky Moon, Kees Moeliker

Video of the Third Session at MIT (of 3)

The people and topics in the third session:

  • BOTANY PRIZE: Felipe Yamashita: Plants that Imitate Plastic
  • MEDICINE PRIZE: Lieven A. Schenk: Painful Fake Medicine
  • PHYSIOLOGY PRIZE: Ryo Okabe: Mammal Anus Breathing

Discussion host: Kees Moeliker
Bananas: Becky Moon, Kiyoshi Furusawa, Pooja Usgaoncar

Details of the 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony

The 2024 Ig Nobel Prize ceremony included these and other elements:

  • Presenters — A gaggle of genuine, genuinely bemused Nobel laureates physically presented the Ig Nobel Prizes to the new Ig Nobel winners. Here are this year’s prize presenters:
  • Winners — Ten new Ig Nobel Prize winners were introduced. Each winner (or winning team) has done something that makes people LAUGH, then THINK.
  • Eight-year-old Miss Sweetie Poo ensured that all speeches were kept brief and thus delightful.
  • Theme — the theme of the 2024 ceremony was: MURPHY’S LAW (“If anything can go wrong, it will”).
  • Mini-Opera — A new mini-opera premiered as part of the ceremony. Called “The International Murphy’s Law Song Competition Contest Opera”, it’s about a competition to see who can perform the most Murphy-esque song about Murphy’s Law. During the opera, things went wrong. Starring Patrick Neal, Pooja Usgaonkar, Sara Dion, Ted Sharpe — and Lance Horne as the orchestra.
  • 24/7 Lectures — Several of the world’s great thinkers told us, briefly, what they were thinking about (first in 24 seconds, then in 7 words) in the 24/7 Lectures. Here are this year’s 24/7 lecturers:
  • On-the-fly Drawings — Artist Keira Lee Rice drew a chalk-on-blackboard tribute to each of the ten winners as they were announced.
  • Paper Airplanes — Paper airplanes were thrown by the people in the room. Simultaneously, video clips were displayed, sent in advance by groups of paper-airplane-throwing people in many countries.
  • Welcome, Welcome; Goodbye, Goodbye — The traditional Welcome, Welcome Speech and the traditional Goodbye, Goodbye Speech maintained the standard for what welcome speeches and goodbye speeches should be.
  • And other things.
Curious about the previous year? Take a peek at the 2023 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony!

Paper airplanes in the 2024 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony

Many people who came to the ceremony in person at MIT brought lots of paper, to make paper airplanes, which they threw during the evening.

Many other people managed to throw paper planes in the ceremony in a different way. This short video tells how they were invited to do that:

TICKETS to attend the ceremony in person

Seating was limited. The lecture hall (MIT 10-250) has only 425 seats, many of which were occupied by ceremony participants. There were two kinds of tickets:

Improbable Doodles

A wee gallery of Improbable artwork associated with the 2024 Ig Nobel Prizes. Artwork by Becky Moon and Keira L. Rice.

We Ask for Your Help

As per unfortunate tradition, the ceremony is funded on a thread of a shoestring.

If you or your organization would like to help, please donate to the Ig!

Improbable Research