2001 IG NOBEL PRIZES AWARDED

The 2001 Ig Nobel prizes, sponsored by the science humor magazine, Annals of Improbable Research, were awarded in a ceremony held Oct. 4 at Harvard University.

The Ig Nobel prizes honor people whose achievements "cannot or should not be reproduced." This year's winners included:

Medicine: Peter Barss, McGill University; for his impact-full medical report "Injuries Due to Falling Coconuts." [The Journal of Trauma, vol. 21, no. 11, 1984, pp. 990-1.]

Physics: David Schmidt, University of Massachusetts; for his partial solution to the question of why shower curtains billow inwards.

Biology: Buck Weimer, Pueblo, Colo.; for inventing "Under-Ease," airtight underwear with a replaceable charcoal filter that removes bad-smelling gases before they escape.

Economics: Joel Slemrod, University of Michigan Business School, and Wojciech Kopczuk, 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. ["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, 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, Miami University, Ohio; for his influential research report "An Ecological Study of Glee in Small Groups of Preschool Children." [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, Mich.; for their discovery that black holes fulfill all the technical requirements to be the location of Hell. [March 31, 2001 television and Internet broadcast of the "Jack Van Impe Presents" program.]

Peace: Viliumas Malinauskus, Grutas, Lithuania; for creating the amusement park known as "Stalin World."

Technology: Awarded jointly to John Keogh, 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, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore, India; for their probing medical discovery that nose picking is a common activity among adolescents. ["A Preliminary Survey of Rhinotillexomania in an Adolescent Sample," Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, vol. 62, no. 6, June 2001, pp. 426-31.]

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