About the 2006 Ig® Nobel Prize Ceremony and Lectures
The Ceremony (October 5)........Tickets and Audience Delegations........Webcast ........The 2006 Winners ........24/7 Lecturers ........Mini-opera Ig Informal Lectures (October 7) |  |
Previews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 | In the photo, winners and Nobel Laureates at the 2005 ceremony gather for a pointless photo opportunity. (Click on image to enlarge it) PHOTO: Kees Moeliker. |
The 2006 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony
Thursday, October 5, 2006, 7:30 pm.
(NOTE: the pre-ceremony event -- and the webcast -- begin at 7:20)
Sanders Theater
Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
(Click here for a map and directions, here for info about how to pahk your cah near Hahvud Yahd.)
The 16th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony will announce and introduce the ten new Ig Nobel Prize winners. The winners are traveling to the ceremony, at their own expense, from several continents. The Prizes will be handed to them by a group of genuine, genuinely bemused Nobel Laureates, all before a standing-room only audience of 1200 people. Full details and action pictures will appear in the Nov/Dec 2006 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. The ceremony also includes other wonders.
(Click here to see details and video of last year's ceremony.)
| TICKETS were available from the Harvard Box Office at Holyoke Center. |
| AUDIENCE DELEGATIONS: Audience members who come to the ceremony with a group of six or more people can choose (by registering in advance) to be recognized as an official Delegation. Every delegation will be officially celebrated at the beginning of the Ceremony, and the very most colorful delegations will be chosen to parade ostentatiously into the theater. | TO REGISTER AS A DELEGATION: The registration deadline was Friday, September 29, 2006. |
| WEBCAST: The ceremony was webcast live, beginning at 7:15 pm U.S. Eastern time, here at www.improbable.com. Watch the YouTube archive of the webcast by clicking below. |
RADIO: The ceremony was recorded for later broadcast, on Friday, November 24, the day after Thanksgiving, on National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation/ Science Friday with Ira Flatow."
THEME: Every year, the ceremony has a new theme. (The theme pertains to some of the goings-on at the ceremony, though not necessarily to any of the year's prize-winning achievements). This year's theme: INERTIA.
ADDITIONAL HIGHLIGHTS: In addition to the awarding of the Prizes, the ceremony will include a variety of momentously inconsequential events. Among them:
- "Franz Liszt versus Inertia" -- a special pre-ceremony concert/dance performance by pianist Michael Hawley, choreographer Verena Wieloch, and a cast of several.
[NOTE: the concert/dance begins at 7:20 p.m., and the Ceremony begins at 7:30 p.m.] - RETURN APPEARANCES by
- Lisa Danielson and Will Stefanov, who got married onstage at the 2001 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony.
- 1996 Ig Nobel Art Prize winner Don Featherstone (creator of the plastic pink flamingo).
- 2003 Ig Nobel Biology Prize winner Kees Moeliker (who documented the first scientifically recorded case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck)
- 2003 Interdisciplinary Research Prize winner Stefano Gherlanda (co-author of the study "Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans")
- The 24/7 LECTURES, in which several of the world's top thinkers each explained his or her 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.
The Lecturers include: - Benoit Mandelbrot, creator of fractal geometry. TOPIC: Fractals
- Missy Cummings, aviator and pioneer of technology-human interaction. TOPIC: Automobile Safety
- Frank Wilczek, Nobel Laureate in Physics. TOPIC: Dark Matter
- Irene Pepperberg, wizard of parrot-human communications. TOPIC: Grey Parrots
- William Lipscomb, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry. TOPIC: Inertia
- "Inertia Makes the World Go Around." World premiere of the mini-opera starring Margot Button, Gina Beck, Mr. E. Baritone, and Scott Nicholas.
- The Nobel Laureates who will present the Ig Nobel Prizes to the winners:
- Roy Glauber, Nobel Laureate in Physics, 2005
- Dudley Herschbach, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry,1986
- International Atomic Energy Agency, spokesperson Melissa Fleming, Nobel Laureate in Peace, 2005
- William Lipscomb, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, 1976
- Rich Roberts, Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 1993
- Richard Schrock, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, 2005
- Frank Wilczek , Nobel Laureate in Physics, 2004
- ...and others, some also in person, others in electronic form
- The WIN-A-DATE-WITH-A-NOBEL-LAUREATE CONTEST
- Karen Hopkin, creator of the Studmuffins of Science Calendar
- Gala Introduction of the Audience Delegations
- All speeches will be brief, and thus especially delightful
- Portions of the ceremony will be simultaneously translated into several languages, in a manner most pleasing.
- The Traditional "Welcome, Welcome" Speech
- The Traditional "Goodbye, Goodbye" Speech
- Other wondrous things.
(NOTE: The KEYNOTE ADDRESS will not be given this year, because the eminent keynote speaker was overcome with inertia.)
* Time limits to be enforced by Mr. John Barrett, the Ig Nobel Referee
 | Click on the images for (left) a downloadable PDF of IgBill 2006, the official printed program; or (right) a downloadable 2006 Ig Nobel Ceremony Poster.
|  |
 | 2004 Peace Prize winner Daisuke Inoue -- the inventor of karaoke -- was serenaded at the 2004 Ceremony by Nobel Laureates Dudley Herschbach (left), Richard Roberts and William Lipscomb, and by Karen Hopkin. Dr. Hopkin is, among other things, famed for creating the Studmuffins of Science Calendar. Photo: Kees Moeliker. (Click on image to enlarge it) |
Two days after the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, a related event:
The Ig Informal Lectures
Saturday, Oct 7, 2006. 1:00 pm.
The Ray and Maria Stata Center
Kirsch Auditorium
MIT Building 32, Room 123
32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
(Click here for a map and directions)
FREE ADMISSION -- but to guarantee a place, pick up a free ticket in advance at the MIT Press Bookstore.
A half-afternoon of improbably funny, informative, brief (5 minutes each, plus a few questions & answers with the audience), high-spirited public lectures, in which the new Ig Nobel Prize winners will attempt to explain what they did, and why they did it.
The new winner's talks will be preceded by brief (2 minutes each) talks by past winners Kees Moeliker (Ig Nobel Biology Prize 2003) and Stefano Gherlanda (Interdisciplinary Research Prize 2003); and by Guelph University adventurer/food scientist Massimo Marcone. Each will discuss their most recent discoveries.
This free event is organized in cooperation with the MIT Press Bookstore, and will be accompanied by refreshments provided by the Fulbright Academy of Science & Technology.
All Ig Nobel Prizes 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), and the new book The Man Who Tried to Clone Himself, published by Plume Books, New York, ISBN 0452287723.
The Ig Informal Lectures are co-sponsored by the MIT Press Bookstore.
About the Ceremony:
Annals of Improbable Research editor Marc Abrahams (+1) 617-491-4437.
[On October 5, the day of the ceremony, if you can't reach anyone at Improbable Research, please instead call the Harvard News Office, (+1) 617-495-1585.]
About the Book:
The Man Who Tried to Clone Himself, published by Plume Books; contact Liz Keenan, (+1) 212-366-2245.
| RETURN OF A SWEEPING SUCCESS: Roy Glauber, who for ten years humbly swept paper airplanes on the stage at the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, will be making his first Ig appearance since being awarded a 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics. |  |
In this photo taken at the 1998 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, Professor Glauber serenely sweeps while Nobel Laureates (left to right) Dudley Herschbach, William Lipscomb, and Richard Roberts wear gigantic shoes in tribute to the 1998 Ig Nobel Statistics Prize winners. Nobel Laureate Sheldon Glashow can be seen in the distance at left as he rushes to join his colleagues. [Photo by Eric Workman] (Click on image to enlarge it) |