Ig Nobel Prize Winners 2011 – Annual Ig Nobel Prize winners for 2011 as wacky as ever included one of our favorite mathematicians Harold Camping.
The annual Ig Nobel Prize event is produced by the science humor magazine “Annals of Improbable Research” (AIR), and co-sponsored by the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association, the Harvard-Radcliffe Society of Physics Students, and the Harvard Computer Society.
The Ig Nobel Prize winners received their awards in a ceremony at Harvard where ‘real’ Nobel Prize winners distributed the prizes. Among the recipients of the Ig Nobel Prize for 2011 was a Japanese team that believes airborne wasabi can awaken sleepers in case of emergency, Australian researchers who found a beetle that mates with Aussie beer bottles, and a Norwegian intent on understanding ‘why people sigh.’
Doomsday prophets were the big winners in mathematics, with six ‘end of the world’ types including Mr. Rapture – Harold Camping – recieving prizes. In addition to the IG Nobel Prize the doomsday mathematicians also received the thanks of the committee “for teaching the world to be careful when making mathematical assumptions.”
The Ig Nobel Peace Prize winner was the top politico of Vilnius, Mayor Arturas Zuokas, of Lithuania, who made international news when he drove a tank over automobiles that were blocking the bicycle lane in his fair city.
Check out Scientific American for the complete list of Ig Nobel Prize Winners 2011.
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