The annual Ig Nobel Prizes, renowned for celebrating scientific achievements that first make people laugh and then think, are relocating their ceremony from the United States to Europe for the first time, organizers announced Monday. The move is prompted by growing concerns over attendees’ ability to secure visas.
The 36th annual ceremony, typically held in the US a few weeks before the actual Nobel Prizes, will now take place in Zurich. Marc Abrahams, master of ceremonies and editor of the organizing digital magazine, Annals of Improbable Research, stated in an email to The Associated Press: “During the past year, it has become unsafe for our guests to visit the country.”
He added, “We cannot in good conscience ask the new winners, or the international journalists who cover the event, to travel to the USA this year.” This decision comes amidst a period of heightened immigration scrutiny in the US, which has seen a focus on deporting undocumented migrants and those holding student and visitor exchange visas.
For the past 35 years, winners have consistently traveled to the United States to collect their quirky accolades, often celebrated with a whimsical shower of paper airplanes.
The awards highlight truly unusual and imaginative scientific endeavors. Last year, for instance, honorees included a team of researchers from Japan who meticulously studied whether painting cows with zebra-like stripes could effectively prevent flies from biting them.
Another fascinating group, hailing from Africa and Europe, delved into the culinary preferences of lizards, specifically pondering the types of pizza they might enjoy.
The year’s winners, celebrated across 10 distinct categories, also featured a European team that uncovered how drinking alcohol can, in some instances, improve a person’s ability to speak a foreign language, alongside a dedicated researcher who committed decades to the study of fingernail growth.
Significantly, four of the 10 winners last year opted not to travel to Boston for the ceremony, which has historically been hosted at prestigious institutions like Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Boston University.
This year’s event is a collaboration with institutions of the ETH Domain, part of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and the University of Zurich.
Abrahams remarked, “Switzerland has nurtured many unexpected good things — Albert Einstein’s physics, the world economy, and the cuckoo clock leap to mind — and is again helping the world appreciate improbable people and ideas.”
Milo Puhan, an epidemiologist at the University of Zurich and a 2017 Swiss Ig Nobel laureate, welcomed the relocation. Puhan, whose research demonstrated that playing the didgeridoo can reduce snoring and sleep apnea, noted, “The Ig Nobel Prize makes research visible, and does so with a wink.”
Abrahams confirmed that Zurich will host the ceremony every other year, with other European cities taking turns in between. There are currently no immediate plans for the ceremony to return to the United States.
