The 2002 Ig Nobel Prize Winners
BIOLOGY
Norma E. Bubier, Charles G.M. Paxton, Phil Bowers, and D. Charles Deeming of the United Kingdom, for their report "Courtship Behaviour of Ostriches Towards Humans Under Farming Conditions in Britain." [REFERENCE: "Courtship Behaviour of Ostriches (Struthio camelus) Towards Humans Under Farming Conditions in Britain," Norma E. Bubier, Charles G.M. Paxton, P. Bowers, D.C. Deeming, British Poultry Science, vol. 39, no. 4, September 1998, pp. 477-481.]

PHYSICS
Arnd Leike of the University of Munich, for demonstrating that beer froth obeys the mathematical Law of Exponential Decay. [REFERENCE: "Demonstration of the Exponential Decay Law Using Beer Froth," Arnd Leike, European Journal of Physics, vol. 23, January 2002, pp. 21-26.]

INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
Karl Kruszelnicki of The University of Sydney, for performing a comprehensive survey of human belly button lint -- who gets it, when, what color, and how much.

CHEMISTRY
Theo Gray of Wolfram Research, in Champaign, Illinois, for gathering many elements of the periodic table, and assembling them into the form of a four-legged periodic table table.

MATHEMATICS
K.P. Sreekumar and the late G. Nirmalan of Kerala Agricultural University, India, for their analytical report "Estimation of the Total Surface Area in Indian Elephants." [REFERENCE: "Estimation of the Total Surface Area in Indian Elephants (Elephas maximus indicus)," K.P. Sreekumar and G. Nirmalan, Veterinary Research Communications, vol. 14, no. 1, 1990, pp. 5-17.]

LITERATURE
Vicki L. Silvers of the University of Nevada-Reno and David S. Kreiner of Central Missouri State University, for their colorful report "The Effects of Pre-Existing Inappropriate Highlighting on Reading Comprehension." [ PUBLISHED IN: Reading Research and Instruction, vol. 36, no. 3, 1997, pp. 217-23.]

PEACE
Keita Sato, President of Takara Co., Dr. Matsumi Suzuki, President of Japan Acoustic Lab, and Dr. Norio Kogure, Executive Director, Kogure Veterinary Hospital, for promoting peace and harmony between the species by inventing Bow-Lingual, a computer-based automatic dog-to-human language translation device.

HYGEINE
Eduardo Segura, of Lavakan de Aste, in Tarragona, Spain, for inventing a washing machine for cats and dogs.

ECONOMICS
The executives, corporate directors, and auditors of Enron, Lernaut & Hauspie [Belgium], Adelphia, Bank of Commerce and Credit International [Pakistan], Cendant, CMS Energy, Duke Energy, Dynegy, Gazprom [Russia], Global Crossing, HIH Insurance [Australia], Informix, Kmart, Maxwell Communications [UK], McKessonHBOC, Merrill Lynch, Merck, Peregrine Systems, Qwest Communications, Reliant Resources, Rent-Way, Rite Aid, Sunbeam, Tyco, Waste Management, WorldCom, Xerox, and Arthur Andersen, for adapting the mathematical concept of imaginary numbers for use in the business world. [NOTE: all companies are US-based unless otherwise noted.]

MEDICINE
Chris McManus of University College London, for his excruciatingly balanced report, "Scrotal Asymmetry in Man and in Ancient Sculpture." [PUBLISHED IN: Nature, vol. 259, February 5, 1976, p. 426.]


The 2001 Ig Nobel Prize Winners
MEDICINE
Peter Barss of McGill University, for his impactful medical report "Injuries Due to Falling Coconuts." [PUBLISHED IN: The Journal of Trauma, vol. 21, no. 11, 1984, pp. 990-1.]

PHYSICS
David Schmidt of the University of Massachusetts for his partial solution to the question of why shower curtains billow inwards.

BIOLOGY
Buck Weimer of Pueblo, Colorado for inventing Under-Ease, airtight underwear with a replaceable charcoal filter that removes bad-smelling gases before they escape.

ECONOMICS
Joel Slemrod, of the University of Michigan Business School, and Wojciech Kopczuk, of University of British Columbia, for their conclusion that people find a way to postpone their deaths if that that would qualify them for a lower rate on the inheritance tax. [REFERENCE:"Dying to Save Taxes: Evidence from Estate Tax Returns on the Death Elasticity," National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. W8158, March 2001.]

LITERATURE
John Richards of Boston, England, founder of The Apostrophe Protection Society, for his efforts to protect, promote, and defend the differences between plural and possessive.

PSYCHOLOGY
Lawrence W. Sherman of Miami University, Ohio, for his influential research report "An Ecological Study of Glee in Small Groups of Preschool Children." [PUBLISHED IN: Child Development, vol. 46, no. 1, March 1975, pp. 53-61.]

ASTROPHYSICS
Dr. Jack and Rexella Van Impe of Jack Van Impe Ministries, Rochester Hills, Michigan, for their discovery that black holes fulfill all the technical requirements to be the location of Hell. [REFERENCE: The March 31, 2001 television and Internet broadcast of the "Jack Van Impe Presents" program. (at about the 12 minute mark).]

PEACE
Viliumas Malinauskus of Grutas, Lithuania, for creating the amusement park known as "Stalin World"

TECHNOLOGY
Awarded jointly to John Keogh of Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia, for patenting the wheel in the year 2001, and to the Australian Patent Office for granting him Innovation Patent #2001100012.

PUBLIC HEALTH
Chittaranjan Andrade and B.S. Srihari of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore, India, for their probing medical discovery that nose picking is a common activity among adolescents. [REFERENCE: "A Preliminary Survey of Rhinotillexomania in an Adolescent Sample," Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, vol. 62, no. 6, June 2001, pp. 426-31.]


The 2000 Ig Nobel Prize Winners
PSYCHOLOGY
David Dunning of Cornell University and Justin Kreuger of the University of Illinois, for their modest report, "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments." [Published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 77, no. 6, December 1999, pp. 1121-34.]

LITERATURE
Jasmuheen (formerly known as Ellen Greve) of Australia, first lady of Breatharianism, for her book "Living on Light," which explains that although some people do eat food, they don't ever really need to.

BIOLOGY
Richard Wassersug of Dalhousie University, for his first-hand report, "On the Comparative Palatability of Some Dry-Season Tadpoles from Costa Rica." [Published in The American Midland Naturalist, vol. 86, no. 1, July 1971, pp. 101-9.]

PHYSICS
Andre Geim of the University of Nijmegen (the Netherlands) and Sir Michael Berry of Bristol University (UK), for using magnets to levitate a frog and a sumo wrestler. [REFERENCE: "Of Flying Frogs and Levitrons" by M.V. Berry and A.K. Geim, European Journal of Physics, v. 18, 1997, p. 307-13.]

CHEMISTRY
Donatella Marazziti, Alessandra Rossi, and Giovanni B. Cassano of the University of Pisa, and Hagop S. Akiskal of the University of California (San Diego), for their discovery that, biochemically, romantic love may be indistinguishable from having severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. [REFERENCE: "Alteration of the platelet serotonin transporter in romantic love," Marazziti D, Akiskal HS, Rossi A, Cassano GB, Psychological Medicine, 1999 May;29(3):741-5.]

ECONOMICS
The Reverend Sun Myung Moon, for bringing efficiency and steady growth to the mass-marriage industry, with, according to his reports, a 36-couple wedding in 1960, a 430-couple wedding in 1968, an 1800-couple wedding in 1975, a 6000-couple wedding in 1982, a 30,000-couple wedding in 1992, a 360,000-couple wedding in 1995, and a 36,000,000-couple wedding in 1997.

MEDICINE
Willibrord Weijmar Schultz, Pek van Andel, and Eduard Mooyaart of Groningen, The Netherlands, and Ida Sabelis of Amsterdam, for their illuminating report, "Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Male and Female Genitals During Coitus and Female Sexual Arousal." [Published in British Medical Journal, vol. 319, 1999, pp 1596-1600.]

COMPUTER SCIENCE
Chris Niswander of Tucson, Arizona, for inventing PawSense, software that detects when a cat is walking across your computer keyboard.

PEACE
The British Royal Navy, for ordering its sailors to stop using live cannon shells, and to instead just shout "Bang!"

PUBLIC HEALTH
Jonathan Wyatt, Gordon McNaughton, and William Tullet of Glasgow, for their alarming report, "The Collapse of Toilets in Glasgow." [Published in the Scottish Medical Journal, vol. 38, 1993, p. 185.]


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The 1999 Ig Nobel Prize Winners
SOCIOLOGY
Steve Penfold, of York University in Toronto, for doing his PhD thesis on the sociology of Canadian donut shops.

PHYSICS
Dr. Len Fisher of Bath, England and Sydney, Australia for calculating the optimal way to dunk a biscuit.
...and...
Professor Jean-Marc Vanden-Broeck of the University of East Anglia, England, and Belgium, for calculating how to make a teapot spout that does not drip.

LITERATURE
The British Standards Institution for its six-page specification (BS-6008) of the proper way to make a cup of tea.

SCIENCE EDUCATION
The Kansas State Board of Education and the Colorado State Board of Education, for mandating that children should not believe in Darwin's theory of evolution any more than they believe in Newton's theory of gravitation, Faraday's and Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism, or Pasteur's theory that germs cause disease.

MEDICINE
Dr. Arvid Vatle of Stord, Norway, for carefully collecting, classifying, and contemplating which kinds of containers his patients chose when
submitting urine samples. (REFERENCE: "Unyttig om urinprøver," Arvid Vatle, Tidsskift for Den norske laegeforening [The Journal of the Norwegian Medical Association], no. 8, March 20, 1999, p. 1178.)

CHEMISTRY
Takeshi Makino, president of The Safety Detective Agency in Osaka, Japan, for his involvement with S-Check, an infidelity detection spray that wives can apply to their husbands' underwear.

BIOLOGY
Dr. Paul Bosland, director of The Chile Pepper Institute, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico, for breeding a spiceless jalapeno chile pepper.

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION
Hyuk-ho Kwon of Kolon Company of Seoul, Korea, for inventing the self-perfuming business suit.

PEACE
Charl Fourie and Michelle Wong of Johannesburg, South Africa, for inventing an automobile burglar alarm consisting of a detection circuit and a flamethrower.

MANAGED HEALTH CARE
The late George and Charlotte Blonsky of New York City and San Jose, California, for inventing a device (US Patent #3,216,423) to aid women in giving birth -- the woman is strapped onto a circular table, and the table is then rotated at high speed.


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The 1998 Ig Nobel Prize Winners
SAFETY ENGINEERING
Troy Hurtubise, of North Bay, Ontario, for developing, and
personally testing a suit of armor that is impervious to grizzly
bears. [REFERENCE: "Project Grizzly", produced by the "National Film
Board of Canada.]

BIOLOGY
Peter Fong of Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, for
contributing to the happiness of clams by giving them Prozac.
[REFERENCE: "Induction and Potentiation of Parturition in
Fingernail Clams (Sphaerium striatinum) by Selective Serotonin Re-
Uptake Inhibitors (SSRIs)," Peter F. Fong, Peter T. Huminski, and
Lynette M. D'urso, "Journal of Experimental Zoology, vol. 280,
1998, pp. 260-64.]

PEACE
Prime Minister Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee of India and Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan, for their aggressively peaceful
explosions of atomic bombs.

CHEMISTRY
Jacques Benveniste of France, for his homeopathic discovery that
not only does water have memory, but that the information can be
transmitted over telephone lines and the Internet.
[NOTE: Benveniste also won the 1991 Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize.]
[REFERENCE:"Transatlantic Transfer of Digitized Antigen Signal by
Telephone Link," J. Benveniste, P. Jurgens, W. Hsueh and J. Aissa,
"Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology - Program and
abstracts of papers to be presented during scientific sessions
AAAAI/AAI.CIS Joint Meeting February 21-26, 1997"]

SCIENCE EDUCATION
Dolores Krieger, Professor Emerita, New York University, for
demonstrating the merits of therapeutic touch, a method by which
nurses manipulate the energy fields of ailing patients by
carefully avoiding physical contact with those patients.

STATISTICS
Jerald Bain of Mt. Sinai Hospital in Toronto and Kerry Siminoski
of the University of Alberta for their carefully measured report,
"The Relationship Among Height, Penile Length, and Foot Size."
[Published in "Annals of Sex Research," vol. 6, no. 3, 1993, pp.
231-5.

PHYSICS. Deepak Chopra of The Chopra Center for Well Being, La
Jolla, California, for his unique interpretation of quantum
physics as it applies to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
economic happiness. [REFERENCE: Deepak Chopra's books "Quantum
Healing," "Ageless Body, Timeless Mind," etc.]

ECONOMICS. Richard Seed  of Chicago for his efforts to stoke up the
world economy by cloning himself and other human beings.

MEDICINE
To Patient Y and to his doctors, Caroline Mills, Meirion Llewelyn,
David Kelly, and Peter Holt, of Royal Gwent Hospital, in Newport,
Wales, for the cautionary medical report, "A Man Who Pricked His
Finger and Smelled Putrid for 5 Years." [Published in "The
Lancet," vol. 348, November 9, 1996, p. 1282.]

LITERATURE
Dr. Mara Sidoli of Washington, DC, for her illuminating report,
"Farting as a Defence Against Unspeakable Dread." [Published in
"Journal of Analytical Psychology," vol. 41, no. 2, 1996, pp. 165-78.]


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


The 1997 Ig Nobel Prize Winners
BIOLOGY
T. Yagyu and his colleagues from the University Hospital
of Zurich, Switzerland, from Kansai Medical University in Osaka,
Japan, and from Neuroscience Technology Research in Prague, Czech
Republic, for measuring people's brainwave patterns while they
chewed different flavors of gum. [Published as "Chewing gum flavor
affects measures of global complexity of multichannel EEG," T.
Yagyu, et al., "Neuropsychobiology," vol. 35, 1997, pp. 46-50.]

ENTOMOLOGY
Mark Hostetler of the University of Florida, for his
scholarly book, "That Gunk on Your Car," which identifies the
insect splats that appear on automobile windows. [The book is
published by Ten Speed Press.]

ASTRONOMY
Richard Hoagland of New Jersey, for identifying
artificial features on the moon and on Mars, including a human
face on Mars and ten-mile high buildings on the far side of the
moon. [REFERNCE: "The Monuments of Mars : A City on the Edge of
Forever,"by Richard C. Hoagland,North Atlantic Books, Berkeley,
CA,1996.]

COMMUNICATIONS
Sanford Wallace, president of Cyber Promotions of
Philadelphia -- neither rain nor sleet nor dark of night have
stayed this self-appointed courier from delivering electronic junk
mail to all the world.

PHYSICS
John Bockris of Texas A&M University, for his wide-
ranging achievements in cold fusion, in the transmutation of base
elements into gold, and in the electrochemical incineration of
domestic rubbish.

LITERATURE
Doron Witztum, Eliyahu Rips and Yoav Rosenberg of
Israel, and Michael Drosnin of the United States, for their
hairsplitting statistical discovery that the bible contains a
secret, hidden code.[REFERENCE: Witztum, Rips and Rosenberg,'s
original research was published as"Equidistant Letter Sequences in
the Book of Genesis," "Statistical Science," Vol. 9, No. 3, 1994,
pp. 429-38. Drosnin's popular book, "The Bible Code," was
published by Simon & Schuster.]

MEDICINE
Carl J. Charnetski and Francis X. Brennan, Jr. of Wilkes
University, and James F. Harrison of Muzak Ltd. in Seattle,
Washington, for their discovery that listening to elevator Muzak
stimulates immunoblobulin A (IgA) production, and thus may help
prevent the common cold.

ECONOMICS
Akihiro Yokoi of Wiz Company in Chiba, Japan and Aki
Maita of Bandai Company in Tokyo, the father and mother of
Tamagotchi, for diverting millions of person-hours of work into
the husbandry of virtual pets.

PEACE
Harold Hillman of the University of Surrey, England for his
lovingly rendered and ultimately peaceful report "The Possible
Pain Experienced During Execution by Different Methods."
[Published in "Perception 1993," vol 22, pp. 745-53.]

METEOROLOGY
Bernard Vonnegut of the State University of Albany,
for his revealing report, "Chicken Plucking as Measure of Tornado
Wind Speed." [Published in "Weatherwise," October 1975, p. 217.]


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


The 1996 Ig Nobel Prize Winners
BIOLOGY
Anders Barheim and Hogne Sandvik of the University of Bergen,
Norway, for their tasty and tasteful report, "Effect of Ale,
Garlic, and Soured Cream on the Appetite of Leeches." [Published
in "British Medical Journal," vol. 309, Dec 24-31, 1994, p. 1689.]

MEDICINE
James Johnston of R.J. Reynolds, Joseph Taddeo of U.S. Tobacco,
Andrew Tisch of Lorillard, William Campbell of Philip Morris,
Edward A. Horrigan of Liggett Group, Donald S. Johnston of American
Tobacco Company, and the late Thomas E. Sandefur, Jr., chairman of
Brown and Williamson Tobacco Co. for their unshakable discovery,
as testified to the U.S. Congress, that nicotine is not addictive.

PHYSICS
Robert Matthews of Aston University, England, for his studies of
Murphy's Law, and especially for demonstrating that toast often
falls on the buttered side. [REFERENCE: "Tumbling toast, Murphy's
Law and the fundamental constants," "European Journal of Physics,"
vol.16, no.4, July 18, 1995, p. 172-6.]

PEACE
Jacques Chirac, President of France, for commemorating the
fiftieth anniversary of Hiroshima with atomic bomb tests in the
Pacific.

PUBLIC HEALTH
Ellen Kleist of Nuuk, Greenland and Harald Moi of Oslo, Norway,
for their cautionary medical report "Transmission of Gonorrhea
Through an Inflatable Doll." [Published in "Genitourinary
Medicine," vol. 69, no. 4, Aug. 1993, p. 322.]

CHEMISTRY
George Goble of Purdue University, for his blistering world record
time for igniting a barbeque grill-three seconds, using charcoal
and liquid oxygen.

BIODIVERSITY
Chonosuke Okamura of the Okamura Fossil Laboratory in Nagoya,
Japan, for discovering the fossils of dinosaurs, horses, dragons,
princesses, and more than 1000 other extinct "mini-species," each
of which is less than 1/100 of an inch in length. [REFERENCE: the
series "Reports of the Okamura Fossil Laboratory," published by
the Okamura Fossil Laboratory in Nagoya, Japan during the 1970's
and 1980's.]

LITERATURE
The editors of the journal "Social Text," for eagerly publishing
research that they could not understand, that the author said was
meaningless, and which claimed that reality does not exist. [The
paper was "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative
Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity," Alan Sokal, "Social Text,"
Spring/Summer 1996, pp. 217-252.

ECONOMICS
Dr. Robert J. Genco of the University of Buffalo for his discovery
that "financial strain is a risk indicator for destructive
periodontal disease.

ART
Don Featherstone of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, for his ornamentally
evolutionary invention, the plastic pink flamingo.
[REFERENCE: "Pink Flamingos: Splendor on the Grass"]


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The 1995 Ig Nobel Prize Winners
NUTRITION
John Martinez of J. Martinez & Company in Atlanta, for Luak
Coffee, the world's most expensive coffee, which is made from
coffee beans ingested and excreted by the luak (aka, the palm
civet), a bobcat-like animal native to Indonesia.

PHYSICS
D.M.R. Georget, R. Parker, and A.C. Smith, of the Institute of
Food Research, Norwich, England, for their rigorous analysis of
soggy breakfast cereal, published in the report entitled 'A Study
of the Effects of Water Content on the Compaction Behaviour of
Breakfast Cereal Flakes." [Published in "Powder Technology,"
November, 1994, vol. 81, no. 2, pp. 189-96.]

ECONOMICS
Awarded jointly to Nick Leeson and his superiors at Barings Bank
and to Robert Citron of Orange County, California, for using the
calculus of derivatives to demonstrate that every financial
institution has its limits. [REFERENCE: "Barings Lost : Nick
Leeson and the Collapse of Barings Plc," and "Big Bets Gone
Bad"]

MEDICINE
Marcia E. Buebel, David S. Shannahoff-Khalsa, and Michael R.
Boyle, for their invigorating study entitled "The Effects of
Unilateral Forced Nostril Breathing on Cognition." [Published in
"International Journal of Neuroscience," vol. 57, 1991, pp. 239-
249.]

LITERATURE
David B. Busch and James R. Starling, of Madison Wisconsin, for
their deeply penetrating research report, "Rectal foreign bodies:
Case Reports and a Comprehensive Review of the World's
Literature." The citations include reports of, among other items:
seven light bulbs; a knife sharpener; two flashlights; a wire
spring; a snuff box; an oil can with potato stopper; eleven
different forms of fruits, vegetables and other foodstuffs; a
jeweler's saw; a frozen pig's tail; a tin cup; a beer glass; and
one patient's remarkable ensemble collection consisting of
spectacles, a suitcase key, a tobacco pouch and a magazine.
[Published in "Surgery," September 1986, pp. 512-519.]

PEACE
The Taiwan National Parliament, for demonstrating that politicians
gain more by punching, kicking and gouging each other than by
waging war against other nations.

PSYCHOLOGY
Shigeru Watanabe, Junko Sakamoto, and Masumi Wakita, of Keio
University, for their success in training pigeons to discriminate
between the paintings of Picasso and those of Monet. [REFERENCE:
"Pigeons' Discrimination of Paintings by Monet and Picasso,"
"Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior," vol. 63, 1995,
pp. 165-174.]

PUBLIC HEALTH
Martha Kold Bakkevig of Sintef Unimed in Trondheim, Norway, and
Ruth Nielson of the Technical University of Denmark, for their
exhaustive study, "Impact of Wet Underwear on Thermoregulatory
Responses and Thermal Comfort in the Cold." [Published in
"Ergonomics," vol 37, no. 8, Aug. 1994 , pp. 1375-89.]

DENTISTRY
Robert H. Beaumont, of Shoreview, Minnesota, for his incisive
study "Patient Preference for Waxed or Unwaxed Dental Floss."
[Published in "Journal of Periodontology," vol. 61, no. 2, Feb.
1990, pp. 123-5.]

CHEMISTRY
Bijan Pakzad of Beverly Hills, for creating DNA Cologne and DNA
PERFUME, neither of which contain deoxyribonucleic acid, and both
of which come in a triple helix bottle.


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The 1994 Ig Nobel Prize Winners
BIOLOGY
W. Brian Sweeney, Brian Krafte-Jacobs, Jeffrey W. Britton, and
Wayne Hansen, for their breakthrough study, "The Constipated
Serviceman: Prevalence Among Deployed US Troops," and especially
for their numerical analysis of bowel movement frequency.
[Published in "Military Medicine," vol. 158, August, 1993, pp.
346-348.]

PEACE
John Hagelin of Maharishi University and The Institute of Science,
Technology and Public Policy, promulgator of peaceful thoughts,
for his experimental conclusion that 4,000 trained meditators
caused an 18 percent decrease in violent crime in Washington, D.C.
[REFERENCE: "Interim Report: Results of the National Demonstration
Project To Reduce Violent Crime and Improve Governmental
Effectiveness In Washington, D.C., June 7 to July 30, 1993,"
Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy, Fairfield,
Iowa"]

MEDICINE
This prize is awarded in two parts. First, to Patient X, formerly
of the US Marine Corps, valiant victim of a venomous bite from his
pet rattlesnake, for his determined use of electroshock therapy --
at his own insistence, automobile sparkplug wires were attached to
his lip, and the car engine revved to 3000 rpm for five minutes.
Second, to Dr. Richard C. Dart of the Rocky Mountain Poison Center
and Dr. Richard A. Gustafson of The University of Arizona Health
Sciences Center, for their well-grounded medical report: "Failure
of Electric Shock Treatment for Rattlesnake Envenomation."
[Published in "Annals of Emergency Medicine," vol. 20, no. 6, June
1991, pp. 659-61.]

ENTOMOLOGY
Robert A. Lopez of Westport, NY, valiant veterinarian and friend
of all creatures great and small, for his series of experiments in
obtaining ear mites from cats, inserting them into his own ear,
and carefully observing and analyzing the results. [Published in
"The Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association,"
vol. 203, no. 5, Sept. 1, 1993, pp. 606-7.]

PSYCHOLOGY
Lee Kuan Yew, former Prime Minister of Singapore, practitioner of
the psychology of negative reinforcement, for his thirty-year
study of the effects of punishing three million citizens of
Singapore whenever they spat, chewed gum, or fed pigeons.

PHYSICS
The Japan Meterological Agency, for its seven-year study of
whether earthquakes are caused by catfish wiggling their tails.

LITERATURE
L. Ron Hubbard, ardent author of science fiction and founding
father of Scientology, for his crackling Good Book, "Dianetics,"
which is highly profitable to mankind or to a portion thereof.

CHEMISTRY
Texas State Senator Bob Glasgow, wise writer of logical
legislation, for sponsoring the 1989 drug control law which make
it illegal to purchase beakers, flasks, test tubes, or other
laboratory glassware without a permit.

ECONOMICS
Jan Pablo Davila of Chile, tireless trader of financial futures
and former employee of the state-owned Codelco Company, for
instructing his computer to "buy" when he meant "sell," and
subsequently attempting to recoup his losses by making
increasingly unprofitable trades that ultimately lost .5 percent
of Chile's gross national product. Davila's relentless achievement
inspired his countrymen to coin a new verb: " davilar," meaning,
"to botch things up royally."

MATHEMATICS
The Southern Baptist Church of Alabama, mathematical measurers of
morality, for their county-by-county estimate of how many Alabama
citizens will go to Hell if they don't repent.


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The 1993 Ig Nobel Prize Winners
PSYCHOLOGY
John Mack of Harvard Medical School and David Jacobs of Temple
University, mental visionaries, for their leaping conclusion that
people who believe they were kidnapped by aliens from outer space,
probably were -- and especially for their conclusion "the focus of
the abduction is the production of children. [REFERENCE: "Secret
Life : Firsthand, Documented Accounts of UFO Abductions"]

CONSUMER ENGINEERING
Ron Popeil, incessant inventor and perpetual pitchman of late
night television, for redefining the industrial revolution with
such devices as the Veg-O-Matic, the Pocket Fisherman, Mr. Microphone, and the Inside-the-Shell Egg Scrambler.
[REFERENCE: "The Salesman of the Century : Inventing, Marketing,
and Selling on TV : How I Did It and How You Can Too!"]

BIOLOGY
Paul Williams Jr. of the Oregon State Health Division and Kenneth
W. Newell of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, bold
biological detectives, for their pioneering study, "Salmonella
Excretion in Joy-Riding Pigs." [Published in American Journal of
Public Health and the Nation's Health, vol. 60, no. 5, May 1970,
pp. 926-9.]

ECONOMICS
Ravi Batra of Southern Methodist University, shrewd economist and
best-selling author of "The Great Depression of 1990" ($17.95) and
"Surviving the Great Depression of 1990" ($18.95), for selling
enough copies of his books to single-handedly prevent worldwide
economic collapse.

PEACE
The Pepsi-Cola Company of the Phillipines, suppliers of sugary
hopes and dreams, for sponsoring a contest to create a
millionaire, and then announcing the wrong winning number, thereby
inciting and uniting 800,000 riotously expectant winners, and
bringing many warring factions together for the first time in
their nation's history.

VISIONARY TECHNOLOGY
Presented jointly to Jay Schiffman of Farmington Hills, Michigan,
crack inventor of AutoVision, an image projection device that
makes it possible to drive a car and watch television at the same
time, and to the Michigan state legislature, for making it legal
to do so.

CHEMISTRY
James Campbell and Gaines Campbell of Lookout Mountain, Tennessee,
dedicated deliverers of fragrance, for inventing scent strips, the
odious method by which perfume is applied to magazine pages.

LITERATURE
E. Topol, R. Califf, F. Van de Werf, P. W. Armstrong, and
their 972 co-authors, for publishing a medical research paper
which has one hundred times as many authors as pages.
[The study was published in The New England Journal of
Medicine, vol. 329, no. 10, September 2, 1993, pp. 673-82.]

MATHEMATICS
Robert Faid of Greenville, South Carolina, farsighted and faithful
seer of statistics, for calculating the exact odds
(710,609,175,188,282,000 to 1) that Mikhail Gorbachev is the Antichrist.
[REFERENCE: "Gorbachev! Has the Real Antichrist Come?"]

PHYSICS
Louis Kervran of France, ardent admirer of alchemy, for his
conclusion that the calcium in chickens' eggshells is created by a
process of cold fusion. REFERENCE: "Biological Transmutations and
their applications in: Chemistry, Physics, Biology, Ecology,
Medicine, Nutrition, Agronomy, Geology"]

MEDICINE
James F. Nolan, Thomas J. Stillwell, and John P. Sands, Jr.,
medical men of mercy, for their painstaking research report,
"Acute Management of the Zipper-Entrapped Penis." [Published
in Journal of Emergency Medicine, vol. 8, no. 3, May/June 1990,
pp. 305-7.]


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The 1992 Ig Nobel Prize Winners
MEDICINE
F. Kanda, E. Yagi, M. Fukuda, K. Nakajima, T. Ohta and O. Nakata
of the Shisedo Research Center in Yokohama, for their pioneering
research study "Elucidation of Chemical Compounds Responsible for
Foot Malodour," especially for their conclusion that people who
think they have foot odor do, and those who don't, don't.
[Published in British Journal of Dermatology, vol. 122, no. 6,
June 1990, pp. 771-6.]

ARCHEOLOGY
Eclaireurs de France, the Protestant youth group whose name means
"those who show the way," fresh-scrubbed removers of grafitti, for
erasing the ancient paintings from the walls of the Meyrieres Cave
near the French village of Bruniquel.

ECONOMICS
The investors of Lloyds of London, heirs to 300 years of dull
prudent management, for their bold attempt to insure disaster by
refusing to pay for their company's losses.

BIOLOGY
Dr. Cecil Jacobson, relentlessly generous sperm donor, and
prolific patriarch of sperm banking, for devising a simple,
single-handed method of quality control. [REFERENCE: "The
Babymaker : Fertility Fraud and the Fall of Dr. Cecil
Jacobson"]

CHEMISTRY
Ivette Bassa, constructor of colorfulcolloids, for her role in
the crowning achievement of twentieth century chemistry, the
synthesis of bright blue Jell-O.

PHYSICS
David Chorley and Doug Bower, lions of low-energy physics, for
their circular contributions to field theory based on the
geometrical destruction of English crops.

PEACE
Daryl Gates, former Police Chief of the City of Los Angeles, for
his uniquely compelling methods of bringing people together.

NUTRITION
The utilizers of Spam, courageous consumers of canned comestibles,
for 54 years of undiscriminating digestion.

LITERATURE
Yuri Struchkov, unstoppable author from the Institute of
Organoelemental Compounds in Moscow, for the 948 scientific papers
he published between the years 1981 and 1990, averaging more than
one every 3.9 days.

ART
Presented jointly to Jim Knowlton, modern Renaissance man, for his
classic anatomy poster "Penises of the Animal Kingdom," and to the
U.S. National Endowment for the Arts for encouraging Mr. Knowlton
to extend his work in the form of a pop-up book.


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The 1991 Ig Nobel Prize Winners
CHEMISTRY
Jacques Benveniste, prolific proseletizer and dedicated
correspondent of "Nature," for his persistent discovery that
water, H2O, is an intelligent liquid, and for demonstrating to his
satisfaction that water is able to remember events long after all
trace of those events has vanished.

MEDICINE
Alan Kligerman, deviser of digestive deliverance, vanquisher of
vapor, and inventor of Beano, for his pioneering work with anti-
gas liquids that prevent bloat, gassiness, discomfort and
embarassment.

EDUCATION
J. Danforth Quayle, consumer of time and occupier of space, for
demonstrating, better than anyone else, the need for science
education.

BIOLOGY
Robert Klark Graham, selector of seeds and prophet of propagation,
for his pioneering development of the Repository for Germinal
Choice, a sperm bank that accepts donations only from Nobellians
and Olympians.

ECONOMICS
Michael Milken, titan of Wall Street and father of the junk bond,
to whom the world is indebted.

LITERATURE
Erich Von Daniken, visionary raconteur and author of "Chariots of
the Gods," for explaining how human civilization was influenced by
ancient astronauts from outer space.

PEACE
Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb and first champion of
the Star Wars weapons system, for his lifelong efforts to change
the meaning of peace as we know it.


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