Ig Nobel Prizes by Marc Abrahams, Orion, £9.99, ISBN 0752851500 Reviewed by Maggie McDonald
WANT a date with a Nobel laureate? It could be yours: all you have to do is attend an Ig Nobel Prize award ceremony. The Igs are awarded for science that is – or should be – unrepeatable because of its obviousness, futility or sheer unlikeliness. A few past winners will give you the flavour of the awards: the author of a study of teenage nosepicking habits, President Jacques Chirac of France, “for commemorating the 50th anniversary of Hiroshima with atomic tests in the Pacific”, and the inventor of the self-perfuming business…
