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A silly science prize changed my career

A levitating frog, a necrophiliac duck, taxi drivers’ brains — the Ig Nobel prizes have shined a spotlight on offbeat work. Here’s an inside look at how winners feel about this sometimes unwanted ‘honour’.

Beyond the fun, several researchers who have won an ‘Ig’ say that it has improved their careers by helping them to reach wider audiences, and it has prompted some scientists to spend more time engaging with the public about their work. It was on another Friday night, several years after the levitation experiments, that Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, who is now at the National University of Singapore, stuck a piece of tape to graphite, leading to their discovery of graphene 4 — and their shared Nobel prize. Lyons, who is a psychologist at Liverpool John Moores University, UK, says that the prize is excellent for public engagement because it makes science popular, and for this reason, the Ig Nobel is one of the most respected academic awards in her field, she says.

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