THE IG NOBEL PRIZES - 2026
The Ig Nobel is a satirical prize, based on the actual Nobel Prize, awarded annually since 1991 to promote public engagement with scientific research. The Ig Nobel motto is "Laugh first, then think." Though the awards are given for seemingly ridiculous projects, further thought reveals that they are based on genuine scientific achievements, often with potential for future accomplishments.
For example, a 2006 study showing that mosquitos are attracted to the smell of Limburger cheese won the Ig Nobel prize in biology. As a result of these findings, traps baited with this cheese have been used to combat the malaria epidemic in Africa.
The Ig Nobels were created by Marc Abrahams, co-founder of The Annals of Improbable Research, in 1991, who has been master of ceremonies at all award ceremonies. The awards are presented by actual Nobel Laureates. The ceremony is light-hearted and full of surprises. Throwing paper airplanes onto the stage is a long-standing tradition. The winners give a 60-second acceptance speech and a 24/7 lecture where they summarize their work in 24 seconds and 7 words. There is a competition to win a date with a Nobel Laureate, and each winner receives a ten trillion dollar Zimbabwean banknote ($.04 U.S.)
The ceremony originally took place in a lecture hall at MIT, but moved to Harvard in 1995. From 2020-2023 the ceremony went on line due to COVID-19, returning to MIT in 2024. The 2026 ceremony was hosted by the University of Zurich in Switzerland, with Abrahams saying that the United States had become "unsafe" for guests. The 2027 ceremony will be in Antwerp, Belgium.
Note: Sir Andre Geim was awarded an Ig Nobel in 2000 for levitating a frog by magnetism. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010 for his work with the electromagnetic properties of graphene. He is the only individual, as of 2026, to have received both a Nobel and an Ig Nobel prize.
IG NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS - 2026
CHEMISTRY
Sanchari Banerjee and others for discovering that milk proteins from viviparous cockroaches pack three times as much energy as milk proteins from cows.
MEDICINE
Tokuji Unno (posthumous) for a study called "How to Blow the Nose - An Aerodynamic Study of the Nose Blowing" concluding that "a big and long nose blow is therefore recommended to prevent upper and lower respiratory tract diseases."
BIOLOGY
Joao Miguel Alves-Nunez and others for gently stepping on various parts of venomous snakes - repeatedly, at various temperatures at various times of day - to try to learn what does and does not induce a venomous snake to bite a human. One conclusion was that the snake is more likely to bite if the human steps on its head.
PHYSICS
Randy Hurd and others for theoretical and experimental attempts to design a splash-free urinal - concluding that the crucial factor is the angle at which the pee stream strikes the porcelain surface. It turns out that dogs have already figured out this angle when they lift their legs to pee, and when the team modeled this on a computer, they pegged the optimal angle at 30 degrees.
SOIL SCIENCE
Franz Bender and others for burying 1,000 identical pairs of underpants in more than 25 countries around the world and digging them up after two months - as part of a citizen science project to map out soil health. Land use was found to be the most important factor. Underpants decomposed the fastest in private gardens, where soil analysis also revealed the highest levels of organic matter.
