The 28th First Annual Ig® Nobel Prize Ceremony & Lectures

TICKETS for this year’s Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony will go on sale in early July, exclusively from the Harvard Box Office. Stay informed about upcoming Ig Nobel events by joining our private E-mail list. Please enter your E-mail address here:

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 (Thursday Sept. 6th, 2018).

Contact us to discuss becoming a supporter of the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony.

FIGS (Friends of the Ig) — Generous supporters of the 2018 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, who are helping the world laugh then think:

This 28th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony will include many improbable things:

• Ten new Ig Nobel Prize winners will be announced and introduced
• The winners physically received their prizes, and a handshake, from genuine, genuinely bemused Nobel laureates:
  • Eric Maskin  (economics, 2007)
  • Wolfgang Ketterle  (physics, 2001)
  • Oliver Hart  (economics, 2016)
  • Michael Rosbash  (physiology or medicine, 2017)
  • Barry Sharpless  (chemistry, 2001)
  • Roy Glauber  (physics, 2005)
  • Rich Roberts  (physiology or Medicine, 1993)
  • Jerome Friedman  (physics, 1990)
  • And perhaps others

• • THE THEME of the 2018 ceremony (though not necessarily of the achievements that win prizes) is: THE HEART.
  • PRE-PRE-CEREMONY TRANSEPT CONCERT in the transept (lobby) by The Boston Squeezebox Ensemble (BSE) (Directed by Dr. Thomas Michel)

• THE 24/7 LECTURES, in which several of the world’s top thinkers each explained 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
  • Suzana Herculano. Topic: The Brain.
  • Dakota McCoy. Topic: The Color Black.
  • And perhaps others

• PREMIER OF THE MINI-OPERA “The Broken Heart Opera”
  • Music by Ted Snyder, Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff, and one other
  • Story and words by Marc Abrahams.
  • Directed by Maria Ferrante
  • Starring Maria Ferrante
  • With The Cardiac Chorus. The chorus ranks will be swelled by the Nobel laureates

• CEREMONIAL BOWS from returning past Ig Nobel Prize winners
• SALUTES to the Audience Delegations
• Karen Hopkin, creator of the Studmuffins of Science Calendar
• The Minordomos, who visibly made things run smoothly on stage
• The Human Curtain Rods, who held aloft the sacred curtain through which the winners enter
• The PAPER AIRPLANE DELUGES (2 of them)
• The Human Spotlights, who illuminated the proceedings
• Eight-year-old “Miss Sweetie-Poo“, who encouraged speakers to keep their speeches brief
• Jean Berko Gleason: The Traditional “Welcome, Welcome” Speech
• Jean Berko Gleason: The Traditional “Goodbye, Goodbye” Speech
• AND other wondrous things

The ceremony still 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) 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, like you, is 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 15, 2018, 1:00 pm
MIT, (building and room TBA)

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.
• Past winners will return, to share their adventures
• Winners will be available for audience members to chat with, both before and after the lectures.

The Ig informal Lectures are a free event, organized in cooperation with the MIT Press Bookstore.

Here’s video of last year’s (2017) Ig Informal Lectures:

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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).