The Graduate Schools present: ‘Ig Nobel Awards Tour Show’.
“The Ig Nobel Awards are arguably the highlight of the scientific calendar.” Nature
The Ig Nobel Prizes honour achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honour the imaginative, and spur people’s interest in science, medicine and technology.
The Awards Tour Show, hosted by the Graduate Schools, returns to Imperial College London for the third successive year, as part of National Science and Engineering Week celebrations. The event is co sponsored by The British Association for the Advancement of Science and by The Guardian.
The event will consist of the Tour Show from 18.00-19.30 followed by an informal reception from 19.30-20.30. Your ticket entitles you to one free drink at the reception.
The show will feature:
Marc Abrahams
Marc Abrahams is organiser of the Ig Nobel Prizes, editor of the Annals of Improbable Research and Guardian columnist.
Kees Moeliker
Kees Moeliker is curator of birds at the Natural History Museum Rotterdam. He will discuss the possible imminent extinction of the pubic louse. Moeliker won the 2003 Ig Nobel Biology Prize for documenting the first scientifically recorded case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck. He is also the Annals of Improbable Research European Bureau Chief.
David Gadian
David Gadian and colleagues won the 2003 Ig Nobel Medicine Prize for for presenting evidence that the brains of London taxi drivers are more highly developed than those of their fellow citizens.
Fiona Barclay
Fiona Barclay and Max Whitby collaborated with Theo Gray to assemble the world’s first periodic table table — a large, lovely, four-legged piece of furniture that contains all the elements of the periodic table (except those that are overly lethal or have half-lives that are vanishingly small). The result: the 2002 Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize. Max is in the Computational Physical Chemistry Group at Imperial College London and founding director of RGB Research. Fiona, a biochemist, is business development manager of RGB Research.
Jim Gundlach
Jim Gundlach is co-author of the study “The Effect of Country Music on Suicide,” for which he shared the 2004 Ig Nobel Medicine Prize.
John Hoyland
John Hoyland created and edits the “Feedback” column in New Scientist Magazine. He is a repository of improbable discoveries.
Erwin Kompanje
Erwin Kompanje is a clinical ethicist at Erasmus University Rotterdam, and a scholar of overlooked spectacular medical history.
Maureen MacGlahan
Maureen MacGlashan is the editor of The Indexer, the journal that published Glenda Browne’s 2007 Ig Nobel Literature Prize-winning study of the word “the” — and of the many ways “the” causes problems for anyone who tries to put things into alphabetical order.
Chris McManus
Chris McManus wrote the study “Scrotal Asymmetry in Man and in Ancient Sculpture,” for which he later received the 2002 Ig Nobel Medicine Prize. He is Professor of Psychology and Medical Education at University College London.
Brian Witcombe and Dan Meyer
Brian Witcombe and Dan Meyer shared the 2007 Ig Nobel Medicine Prize for their penetrating medical report “Sword Swallowing and Its Side Effects.”
For full details see http://www.improbable.com/
Tickets: Tickets are free (limited to two tickets per person) and must be obtained in advance.
Email: events@imperial.ac.uk with your name, email and postal address.
Tickets will be mailed approximately one week before the show and the ticket entitles everyone to one free drink (beer, wine or soft drink) at the reception following the show.
NOTE: Anyone who has not received their tickets by Friday 7th March should email events@imperial.ac.uk to let them know.