Boston | October 7, 2026

Since 1991, the Ig Nobel Prizes have honored unexpected and unconventional achievements in science — research that first makes you laugh, and then makes you think. After 35 years in the Boston area, the Ig Nobel Prizes moved to Zurich for the 36th First Annual ceremony on September 3, 2026. In honor of the first Swiss edition of the prizes, Swissnex in Boston and New York hosted a livestream watch party of the ceremony, as well as BOST-Ig, a celebration of the prizes on September 24, featuring presentations by current and former Ig Nobel winners.

We sat down with Marc Abrahams, the creator of the Ig Nobel Prizes, to talk about science, humor, and the importance of honoring improbable research.

There’s a lot of concern these days about declining trust in science, and some people worry that poking fun at scientists isn’t making things better. What would you say to that critique, and how have people’s attitudes toward the Igs changed over the years?

Especially in the early days, people didn’t quite know what to make of us. Some of them got the idea right away, but there were plenty of people who thought that it was about making scientists look silly, and was, intentionally or not, undermining science itself. At one point the UK government even formally requested that we stop honoring British scientists because it would hurt their careers. We took that concern seriously and never wanted to cause any harm. Right from the start we invited scientists with Nobel prizes to get involved, as a way of saying “That’s not what this is about, people like that wouldn’t be involved if we were attacking science.”

We say that the prizes are for research that first makes you laugh, then makes you think. That second part doesn’t always get as much attention — the humor is there to open the door, make science less intimidating, and get people interested. I think over the years, people have come around to that view. After the ceremony last month, Nature ran a wonderful editorial that really got the spirit of what we do. And of course Swissnex and the Swiss government have really embraced the Igs this year — things have come a long way.

That description — “first makes people laugh, and then makes them think” — really sums it up. Where did that idea come from?

In 2001, I got a phone call from a reporter who had just discovered the Ig Nobel Prizes because he’d heard about this prize for underwear that traps bad-smelling gasses. He was giggling, and said it was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard. I let him laugh for a while, and then I asked him, “Do you know why the people who invented this invented this?” I told him it’s a married couple and one of them has Crohn’s disease, an intestinal condition that produces really bad-smelling gasses. And he went silent, and said, “My best friend has Crohn’s disease.” I could hear that the world just changed for him, and I said to him, “Yeah, this is about things that make people laugh and then make people think.” That was the first time I’d said that, and I could really hear almost a click in his mind. So I wrote it down, and that’s become our catchphrase.

Speaking of brevity, academics aren’t always known for getting to the point, but you’ve developed some unusual ways of encouraging them to keep it pithy. Can you tell us more about that and why it matters?

The first few years, we didn’t have any time limit on acceptance speeches, and the ceremony just kept getting longer and longer. And at one point we realized we had to do something. But how do you tell someone to stop talking after you’ve invited them to come and speak and they’ve gone to all this trouble? Well, we realized that kids have a certain power that we adults don’t have. And so the next year, we introduced Miss Sweetie Poo, an 8-year-old child who, after the speaker’s gone over a minute, walks up to them and starts saying, “Please stop. I’m bored,” over and over. And that’s been remarkably effective at keeping things moving, but I think there’s also something important to it. In addition to the winners, we always have some other scientists present their topic in something we call the 24/7 Lectures. They get 24 seconds to describe it in as much technical detail and jargon as they can, and then they give a clear, simple description in exactly seven words. It’s a great way of getting them to distill their work down to an idea or phrase that really sticks in people’s heads.

Aside from the prize money (10 trillion Zimbabwean dollars doesn’t go as far as it used to), what’s the biggest impact for the winners?

The biggest thing is the attention. The vast majority of scientists spend their lives working on some specialized question, and rarely ever get this kind of public spotlight. When it’s your day-to-day job, it can be quite a surprise that people outside your field are so fascinated by it. Some of them have never really considered the humor of their research before they get the call from us. Most of them are good sports about it and are really appreciative, if a bit bemused. The day after the ceremony this year, I was walking through the streets of Zurich with one of the winners. People had seen photographs of her in the news, holding this large pole with decomposing underwear on it, and they were coming up to her, a parade of strangers saying congratulations. The look on her face as she realized, “My life has changed…” — it was wonderful.