It's safe to say that when Peter Barss began investigating the deadly hazards posed by Cocos nucifera, the tropical coconut palm, he wasn't expecting to win a Nobel Prize for his work.
And he didn't. But nearly 20 years after The Journal of Trauma published "Injuries Due to Falling Coconuts," Barss did take home an unexpected career-defining accolade for his impactive study: an Ig Nobel Prize. The media have been hounding him ever since. "I've never had so much attention in my life," he marvels by telephone from his office at United Arab Emirates University in Al Ain.
Such are the strange powers of the Ig Nobel. Since mathematician Marc Abrahams conceived of an award honoring scientific achievements that "cannot or should not be reproduced," the Ig Nobel has become almost as well-known as the prize it is meant to spoof.
On Thursday, the 47-year-old Abrahams will again serve as master of ceremonies for the awards, held each October inside Harvard University's incongruously august Sanders Theatre. He also has a new book out on the prizes and the behind-the-scenes stories of its more unusual recipients.
Speaking from his Cambridge office last week, Abrahams said he is feeling a tad triskaidekaphobic-this being the 13th Ig Nobel ceremony and all. And if that weren't worrisome enough, the guest of honor is Edward A. Murphy III, the son of the man who coined Murphy's Law.
"What can go wrong, probably will," Abrahams says with a hint of hopeful mischief in his voice.
A Harvard graduate with a degree in applied mathematics, Abrahams has been called everything from the "Puck of science" to the "guru of academic grunge." Many consider his job the best in science. When he's not busy organizing the awards, he edits the Annals of Improbable Research, a science humor magazine with a small but devoted following (who are sometimes referred to as AIR heads). His friends and acquaintances have included Nobel Laureates such as Linus Pauling and Car Talk guys Tom and Ray Magliozzi.
Ten Ig Nobel recipients are chosen each year by Abrahams and the Ig Nobel Board of Governors, a group of scientists and journalists who sift through about 5,000 nominations. It's not an easy task, he says. "There are so many good ones."
The winners range from the acid to the absurd. Former French President Jacques Chirac has won for "commemorating the 50th anniversary of Hiroshima with atomic bomb tests in the Pacific." So have a team of British scientists for their report "Courtship behavior of ostriches toward humans under farming conditions in Britain." And we won't even get into the levitating frog study.
