---
title: "Ig Nobel Prize"
chunk: 2/2
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ig_Nobel_Prize"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:26:49.479456+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

The Ig Nobel Prize has received some criticism from scientists. Robert May, who at the time was the chief scientific adviser for the UK, requested that British scientists be excluded from the prize, worried that it would harm their career prospects. As the prize has become more well-known, the scientific community have been more appreciative of it, with some research getting more attention due to winning. At the 2025 ceremony, Tomoki Kojima, one of the winners of the year's biology prize, said that the award "serves as motivation for us to continue striving for excellence".
A September 2009 article in The National titled "A noble side to Ig Nobels" said that, although the prize is often awarded to research of "trivial" questions, history shows that trivial research sometimes leads to important breakthroughs. In 2006, a study showing that mosquitoes that can carry malaria are attracted equally to the smell of Limburger cheese and the smell of human feet earned the Ig Nobel Prize in biology. As a result of these findings, traps baited with this cheese have been used to combat the malaria epidemic in Africa. Before receiving the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for his research on graphene, Andre Geim shared the physics Ig Nobel in 2000 with Michael Berry for the magnetic levitation of a frog, which by 2022 was reportedly part of the inspiration for China's lunar gravity research facility.

== See also ==
List of Ig Nobel Prize winners
Golden Raspberry Awards – awards for bad movies
Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest – an award for bad writing
Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year – an award for books with unusual titles
Pigasus Award – exposing parapsychological, paranormal, or psychic frauds
Golden Fleece Award – award for waste of government funds; often awarded for government-paid research considered frivolous or wasteful
Foot in Mouth Award – an award presented by the Plain English Campaign for "a baffling comment by a public figure"

== References ==

== External links ==

Official website
Index to list of past winners
Abrahams, Marc (September 2014). "A science award that makes you laugh, then think". TED Talk.