---
title: "List of Ig Nobel Prize winners"
chunk: 4/5
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ig_Nobel_Prize_winners"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:05:15.055148+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Astronomy: Presented to Richard C. Hoagland of New Jersey, for identifying artificial features on the Moon and on Mars, including a human face on Mars and ten-mile high buildings on the far side of the Moon.
Biology: Presented to T. Yagyu and his colleagues from the University Hospital of Zürich, Switzerland, the Kansai Medical University in Osaka, Japan, and the Neuroscience Technology Research in Prague, Czech Republic, for measuring people's brainwave patterns while they chewed different flavors of gum.
Communications: Presented to Sanford Wallace, president of Cyber Promotions of Philadelphia. Nothing has stopped this self-appointed courier from delivering electronic junk mail to all the world.
Economics: Presented to Akihiro Yokoi of Wiz Company in Chiba, Japan, and Aki Maita of Bandai Company in Tokyo, for diverting millions of man-hours of work into the husbandry of virtual pets.
Entomology: Presented to Mark Hostetler of the University of Florida, for his book, That Gunk on Your Car, (ISBN 978-0-89815-961-5) which identifies the insect splats that appear on automobile windows.
Literature: Presented to Doron Witztum, Eliyahu Rips, and Yoav Rosenberg of Israel, and to Michael Drosnin of the United States, for their claimed statistical discovery of a hidden code in the Bible.
Medicine: Presented to Carl J. Charnetski and Francis X. Brennan, Jr. of Wilkes University, and James F. Harrison of Muzak Ltd. in Seattle, Washington, for their discovery that listening to Muzak stimulates the immune system and thus may help prevent the common cold.
Meteorology: Presented to Bernard Vonnegut of the State University of New York at Albany, for his report, "Chicken Plucking as Measure of Tornado Wind Speed."
Peace: Presented to Harold Hillman of the University of Surrey, England, for his report "The Possible Pain Experienced During Execution by Different Methods."
Physics: Presented to John Bockris of Texas A&M University, for his achievements in cold fusion, in the transmutation of base elements into gold, and in the electrochemical incineration of domestic rubbish.

== 1998 ==
The ceremony took place on 8 October 1998.

Chemistry: Presented to Jacques Benveniste of France, for his homeopathic "discovery" that not only does water have memory, but that the information can be transmitted over telephone lines and the Internet.
Biology: Presented to Peter Fong of Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, for contributing to the happiness of clams by giving them Prozac.
Economics: Presented to Richard Seed of Chicago for his efforts to stoke up the world economy by cloning himself and other human beings.
Literature: Presented to Dr. Mara Sidoli of Washington, D.C., for her illuminating report, "Farting as a Defence Against Unspeakable Dread".
Medicine: Presented to Patient Y and to his doctors, Caroline Mills, Meirion Llewelyn, David Kelly, and Peter Holt, of Royal Gwent Hospital, in Newport for the cautionary medical report, "A Man Who Pricked His Finger and Smelled Putrid for 5 Years."
Peace: Presented to Prime Minister of India, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, for their aggressively peaceful detonations of atomic bombs.
Physics: Presented to Deepak Chopra of The Chopra Center for Well Being, La Jolla, California, for his unique interpretation of quantum physics as it applies to life, liberty, and the pursuit of economic happiness.
Safety Engineering: Presented to Troy Hurtubise, of North Bay, Ontario, for developing and personally testing a suit of armor that is impervious to grizzly bears.
Science Education: Presented to Dolores Krieger, professor emerita, New York University, for demonstrating the merits of therapeutic touch, a method by which nurses manipulate the energy fields of ailing patients by carefully avoiding physical contact with those patients.
Statistics: Presented to Jerald Bain of Mt. Sinai Hospital in Toronto and Kerry Siminoski of the University of Alberta, for their carefully measured report, "The Relationship Among Height, Penile Length, and Foot Size".

== 1999 ==
The ceremony took place on 30 September 1999.

Biology: Presented to Dr. Paul Bosland, director of The Chile Pepper Institute, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico, for breeding a spiceless jalapeño chili pepper.
Chemistry: Presented to Takeshi Makino, president of The Safety Detective Agency in Osaka, Japan, for his involvement with S-Check, an infidelity detection spray that wives can apply to their husbands' underwear.
Environmental Protection: Presented to Hyuk-ho Kwon of Kolon Company of Seoul, South Korea, for inventing the self-perfuming business suit.
Literature: Presented to the British Standards Institution for its six-page specification (BS 6008) of the proper way to make a cup of tea.
Managed Health Care: Presented to George and Charlotte Blonsky of New York City and San Jose, California, for inventing an Apparatus for facilitating the birth of a child by centrifugal force (U.S. patent 3,216,423) to aid women in giving birth: the woman is strapped onto a circular table, and the table is then rotated at high speed.
Medicine: Presented to Arvid Vatle of Stord, Norway, for carefully collecting, classifying, and contemplating which kinds of containers his patients chose when submitting urine samples.
Peace: Presented to Charl Fourie and Michelle Wong of Johannesburg, South Africa, for inventing the Blaster, a foot-pedal activated flamethrower that motorists can use against carjackers.
Physics: Presented to Dr. Len Fisher of Bristol, England and Sydney, Australia for calculating the optimal way to dunk a biscuit (cookie). Also, to Professor Jean-Marc Vanden-Broeck of the University of East Anglia, England, and Belgium, and Joseph Keller of the U.S. for calculating how to make a teapot spout that does not drip.
Science Education: Presented to the Kansas State Board of Education and the Colorado State Board of Education, for mandating that children should not believe in Darwin's theory of evolution any more than they believe in Newton's theory of gravitation, Faraday's and Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism, or Pasteur's theory that germs cause disease.
Sociology: Presented to Steve Penfold, of York University in Toronto, for doing his PhD thesis on the history of Canadian doughnut shops.

== 2000 ==
The ceremony took place on 5 October 2000.