The 25th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony & Lectures

@ImprobResearch, and #IgNobel

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Video Teaser

Enjoy this promotional video for the 2015 ceremony (and enjoy some previews: Scientific American, Boston Magazine, New York Times, 20Minutes; Popular Science; Teknisk Ukeblad; Live Science; ANSA; Science; Inverse):

TICKETS to attend the ceremony are sold out. A few tickets might become available shortly before the ceremony. If so, they will be sold exclusively by the Harvard Box Office

Groups of five (5) or more persons attending the Ig Nobel prize ceremony can be officially recognized during the ceremony as Official Delegations. If you would like your group recognized in this way, first obtain tickets, then register with Louise Sacco, Official Overseer of the Delegations (phone: 781-690-6621, email: LouiseSacco AT gmail.com). The deadline for registering as a delegation is a week before the ceremony.

We announce our biggest supporters on stage during the internationally broadcast prize ceremony. All supporters are thanked here on the website and/or in the IgBill (program).  Past supporters include corporations, laboratories, and local business.
Contact us to discuss becoming a supporter of the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony.

FIGS (Friends of the Ig) — Generous supporters of the 2015 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, who are helping the world laugh then think:

This 25th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony will include many improbable things:

• Ten new Ig Nobel Prize winners will be announced and introduced
• The winners will physically receive their prizes, and a handshake, from genuine, genuinely bemused Nobel laureates:
  • Dudley Herschbach (chemistry, 1986)
  • Carol Greider (physiology or medicine, 2009)
  • Frank Wilczek (physics, 2004)
  • Jack Szostak (physiology or medicine, 2009)
  • Eric Maskin  (economics, 2007)
  • Jerome Friedman (physics, 1990)

• The theme of this year’s ceremony (though not necessarily of the achievements that win prizes) is LIFE.
• Pre-Pre-Ceremony Concert, in the transept (lobby): The Boston Squeezebox Ensemble (BSE): Thomas Michel, Colin Ferguson, Patrick Yacono, Betty Widersky, David Brancazio, Rebecca Cooper, Jooyeon June, Koo Sari Kalin
• Pre-ceremony concert, on stage: Ig Nobel Majordomo Gary Dryfoos will sing songs from past Ig Nobel Operas
• Two Moments of Science, by performing chemists Daniel Rosenberg, Isabelle Rosenberg, and Michael Skuhersky
• The 24/7 LECTURES, in which several of the world’s top thinkers each explains her or his 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
  This year’s 24/7 Lecturers and their topics:
  • Sara Lewis: FIREFLY SEX
  • Frank Wilczek: BEAUTY
  • Deborah Anderson: REPRODUCTION
  • Jack Szostak: LIFE
  • Jessica Gall Myrick: INTERNET CAT VIDEOS

• Premier of the mini-opera “The Best Life“, about a competition to choose the best species of life.
  • music by Giuseppe Verdi and Arthur Sullivan, story and words by Marc Abrahams
  • directed by Maria Ferrante, assisted by Robin Abrahams, costumed by Catherine Quick Spingler
  • starring Maria Ferrante, Scott Taylor, Daniel Rosenberg,
  • with The All-Species Chorus — Delphine Gabbay (chorus wrangler), Erika Hutchinson, Sylvia Rosenberg, Julia Lunetta, Vicki Bloom, Ros (Rosalind) Reid, Natasha Rosenberg, Abby Schiff, Vijaya Sundaram, Rob Hart, Liz Oppenheim, Warren Senders, Ted Sharpe, Nick Carstoiu, et al. The chorus ranks will be swelled, in Act 3 of the opera, by the Nobel laureates.
  • backed by the Concentrated Forces of Nature, a distilled orchestra composed entirely of Harvard Medical School researchers Patrick Yacono and Thomas Michel

• Ceremonial bows from several returning past Ig Nobel Prize winners — including the Final Appearance of 2005 Ig Nobel Nutrition Prize winner Dr. Nakamats, possibly the world’s greatest human being, who will perform the American debut of his swan song. (If somehow you are not familiar with Dr. Nakamats, perhaps you will enjoy this introduction.)
• Ceremonial music by Nicholas Carstoiu and The Ig Leaves
• Karen Hopkin, creator of the Studmuffins of Science Calendar
• The Win-a-Date-With-a-Nobel-Laureate Contest
• Salutes to the Audience Delegations
• The Minordomos (Chris Deter, Eliza Kosoy, Julia Lunetta, Peaco Todd, Sylvia Rosenberg, Natasha Rosenberg, Pooja Usgaonkar) will make most things on stage run smoothly
• Two grand Paper Airplane Deluges
• Speeches will be kept brief, thanks to eight-year-old Ms. Sweetie-Poo
• Special appearance by Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club (LFHCfS) Woman-of-the-Year Anne Madden
• The Traditional “Welcome, Welcome” Speech
• The Traditional “Goodbye, Goodbye” Speech
• Other wondrous things

The ceremony also celebrates the publication of two books: This Is Improbable Too, and The Ig Nobel Cookbook (volume 1)

** Time limits will be enforced by the the referee, Mr. John Barrett

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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.

 

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The Ig Informal Lectures
Saturday, Sep 19, 2015, 1:00 pm
MIT, building 10, room 250.

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

• The new Ig Nobel Prize winners will attempt to explain what they did, and why they did it
• Special appearance by several past Ig Nobel Prize winners — including a special performance by Dr. Nakamats.
• The Ig Nobel Prize winners will be available for you to talk with, both before and after the lectures

The Ig informal Lectures are a free event, organized in cooperation with the MIT Press Bookstore. Seating is limited, so we suggest you arrive a bit early.

(What happens at the Ig Informal Lectures? Here’s a spectator’s report from last year, 2013.)

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Special Thanks To…

All Ig Nobel Prize activities are organized by the Annals of Improbable Research (AIR). The ceremony is co-sponsored by the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association (HRSFA), and the Harvard-Radcliffe Society of Physics Students (SPS).