Ig Nobel Prize
Where the Nobel Prize recognizes revolutionary moments in science, the Ig Nobel Prize, run by Improbable Research, highlights the silliest research of the year – or as the organizers diplomatically put it: "achievements that make people LAUGH, then THINK."
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From 350,757 coin flips to prove probability to the swimming skills of dead trout, the 2024 Ig Nobel Prize winners have been recognized for their absurd work scientific research. And they all walked away with a coveted $100-trillion Zimbabwean banknote. -
The Nobel Prize is the premier award in science, reserved for those that "have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." The Ig Nobel Prize, on the other hand, celebrates the most trivial and ridiculous things our best and brightest have studied. -
Celebrating the stranger side of science – focusing on those discoveries that can make you laugh and then make you think – the 2022 the Ig Nobel Prizes serve as a good-natured counterpoint to the stuffy and impenetrable Nobel Prizes. -
Do beards to protect our faces from punches? Does corruption in a given country correlate with how obese its politicians are? And why are scientists hanging rhinos off helicopters upside-down? These are a few of this year's Ig Nobel Prize winners. -
For three decades, the Ig Nobel Awards have celebrated the lighter side of science by highlighting research achievements that “first make people laugh then make them think.” And there’s no shortage of amusing projects amid the 2020 crop. -
The 2019 Ig Nobels saw awards for those who turned their considerable intellects to everything from cubed wombat poo to thermal asymmetry of the human scrotum. -
A Wasabi Smoke Alarm, the impact of urinary urgency on decision-making and the discovery that a certain kind of beetle copulates with beer bottles are among the achievements honored in this year's Ig Nobel Prizes.