2015

CHEMISTRY PRIZE: For inventing a chemical recipe to partially un-boil an egg. *
   Callum Ormonde and Colin Raston [AUSTRALIA], and Tom Yuan, Stephan Kudlacek, Sameeran Kunche, Joshua N. Smith, William A. Brown, Kaitlin Pugliese, Tivoli Olsen, Mariam Iftikhar, Gregory Weiss [USA]. 
PHYSICS PRIZE: For testing the biological principle that nearly all mammals empty their bladders in about 21 seconds (plus or minus 13 seconds).
 Patricia Yang [USA and TAIWAN], David Hu [USA and TAIWAN], and Jonathan Pham, Jerome Choo [USA]. 
LITERATURE PRIZE: For discovering that the word "huh?" (or its equivalent) seems to exist in every human language — and for not being quite sure why. 
Mark Dingemanse [THE NETHERLANDS, USA], Francisco Torreira [THE NETHERLANDS, BELGIUM, USA], and Nick J. Enfield [AUSTRALIA, THE NETHERLANDS]. 
MANAGEMENT PRIZE: For discovering that many business leaders developed in childhood a fondness for risk-taking, when they experienced natural disasters (such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and wildfires) that — for them — had no dire personal consequences. 
Gennaro Bernile [ITALY, SINGAPORE, USA], Vineet Bhagwat [USA], and P. Raghavendra Rau [UK, INDIA, FRANCE, LUXEMBOURG, GERMANY, JAPAN].
ECONOMICS PRIZE: For offering to pay policemen extra cash if the policemen refuse to take bribes. 
 The Bangkok Metropolitan Police [THAILAND]
MEDICINE PRIZE: For experiments to study the biomedical benefits or biomedical consequences of intense kissing (and other intimate, interpersonal activities). 
 Hajime Kimata [JAPAN, CHINA]; and to Jaroslava Durdiaková [SLOVAKIA, US, UK], Peter Celec [SLOVAKIA, GERMANY], Natália Kamodyová, Tatiana Sedláčková, Gabriela Repiská, Barbara Sviežená, and Gabriel Minárik [SLOVAKIA].
MATHEMATICS PRIZE: For trying to use mathematical techniques to determine whether and how Moulay Ismael the Bloodthirsty, the Sharifian Emperor of Morocco, managed, during the years from 1697 through 1727, to father 888 children. 
Elisabeth Oberzaucher [AUSTRIA, GERMANY, UK] and Karl Grammer [AUSTRIA, GERMANY]. 
BIOLOGY PRIZE: For observing that when you attach a weighted stick to the rear end of a chicken, the chicken then walks in a manner similar to that in which dinosaurs are thought to have walked. 
Bruno Grossi, Omar Larach, Mauricio Canals, Rodrigo A. Vásquez [CHILE], José Iriarte-Díaz [CHILE, USA]. 
 DIAGNOSTIC MEDICINE PRIZE: For determining that acute appendicitis can be accurately diagnosed by the amount of pain evident when the patient is driven over speed bumps. 
Diallah Karim [CANADA, UK], Anthony Harnden [NEW ZEALAND, UK, US], Nigel D'Souza [BAHRAIN, BELGIUM, DUBAI, INDIA, SOUTH AFRICA, US, UK], Andrew Huang [CHINA, UK], Abdel Kader Allouni [SYRIA, UK], Helen Ashdown [UK], Richard J. Stevens [UK], and Simon Kreckler [UK].
PHYSIOLOGY and ENTOMOLOGY PRIZE: For painstakingly creating the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, which rates the relative pain people feel when stung by various insects
 Justin Schmidt [USA, CANADA]
 For carefully arranging for honey bees to sting him repeatedly on 25 different locations on his body, to learn which locations are the least painful (the skull, middle toe tip, and upper arm). and which are the most painful (the nostril, upper lip, and penis shaft). 
Michael L. Smith [USA, UK, THE NETHERLANDS].

2014

PHYSICS PRIZE: For measuring the amount of friction between a shoe and a banana skin, and between a banana skin and the floor, when a person steps on a banana skin that's on the floor.
 [JAPAN]: Kiyoshi Mabuchi, Kensei Tanaka, Daichi Uchijima and Rina Sakai.
NEUROSCIENCE PRIZE: For trying to understand what happens in the brains of people who see the face of Jesus in a piece of toast. 
[CHINA, CANADA]: Jiangang Liu, Jun Li, Lu Feng, Ling Li, Jie Tian, and Kang Lee.
PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE: For amassing evidence that people who habitually stay up late are, on average, more self-admiring, more manipulative, and more psychopathic than people who habitually arise early in the morning. 
[UK, FINLAND, AUSTRALIA, USA]: Peter K. Jonason, Amy Jones, and Minna Lyons.
PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE: For investigating whether it is mentally hazardous for a human being to own a cat. 
 [CZECH REPUBLIC, JAPAN, USA, INDIA]: Jaroslav Flegr, Jan Havlíček and Jitka Hanušova-Lindova, and to David Hanauer, Naren Ramakrishnan, Lisa Seyfried. 
BIOLOGY PRIZE: For carefully documenting that when dogs defecate and urinate, they prefer to align their body axis with Earth's north-south geomagnetic field lines. 
[CZECH REPUBLIC, GERMANY, ZAMBIA]: Vlastimil Hart, Petra Nováková, Erich Pascal Malkemper, Sabine Begall, Vladimír Hanzal, Miloš Ježek, Tomáš Kušta, Veronika Němcová, Jana Adámková, Kateřina Benediktová, Jaroslav Červený and Hynek Burda. 
ART PRIZE:  For measuring the relative pain people suffer while looking at an ugly painting, rather than a pretty painting, while being shot [in the hand] by a powerful laser beam. 
[ITALY]: Marina de Tommaso, Michele Sardaro, and Paolo Livrea.
ECONOMICS PRIZE:  For proudly taking the lead in fulfilling the European Union mandate for each country to increase the official size of its national economy by including revenues from prostitution, illegal drug sales, smuggling, and all other unlawful financial transactions between willing participants. 
[ITALY]: ISTAT —The Italian government's National Institute of Statistics.
MEDICINE PRIZE: For treating "uncontrollable" nosebleeds, using the method of nasal-packing-with-strips-of-cured-pork. 
[USA, INDIA]: Ian Humphreys, Sonal Saraiya, Walter Belenky and James Dworkin. 
ARCTIC SCIENCE PRIZE: For testing how reindeer react to seeing humans who are disguised as polar bears.
[NORWAY, GERMANY, USA, CANADA]: Eigil Reimers and Sindre Eftestøl. 
NUTRITION PRIZE: For their study titled "Characterization of Lactic Acid Bacteria Isolated from Infant Faeces as Potential Probiotic Starter Cultures for Fermented Sausages." 
[SPAIN]: Raquel Rubio, Anna Jofré, Belén Martín, Teresa Aymerich, and Margarita Garriga.
 
2013

MEDICINE PRIZE: For assessing the effect of listening to opera, on heart transplant patients who are mice. 
Masateru Uchiyama [JAPAN], Xiangyuan Jin [CHINA, JAPAN], Qi Zhang [JAPAN], Toshihito Hirai [JAPAN], Atsushi Amano [JAPAN], Hisashi Bashuda [JAPAN] and Masanori Niimi [JAPAN, UK].
 PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE: For confirming, by experiment, that people who think they are drunk also think they are attractive. 
Laurent Bègue [FRANCE], Brad Bushman [USA, UK, the NETHERLANDS, POLAND], Oulmann Zerhouni [FRANCE], Baptiste Subra [FRANCE], and Medhi Ourabah [FRANCE].
JOINT PRIZE IN BIOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY: For discovering that when dung beetles get lost, they can navigate their way home by looking at the Milky Way. 
Marie Dacke [SWEDEN, AUSTRALIA], Emily Baird [SWEDEN, AUSTRALIA, GERMANY], Marcus Byrne [SOUTH AFRICA, UK], Clarke Scholtz[SOUTH AFRICA], and Eric J. Warrant [SWEDEN, AUSTRALIA, GERMANY]. 
SAFETY ENGINEERING PRIZE:  For inventing an electro-mechanical system to trap airplane hijackers — the system drops a hijacker through trap doors, seals him into a package, then drops the encapsulated hijacker through the airplane's specially-installed bomb bay doors, whence he parachutes to earth, where police, having been alerted by radio, await his arrival.
The late Gustano Pizzo [USA],  US Patent #3811643, Gustano A. Pizzo, "anti hijacking system for aircraft", May 21, 1972. 
PHYSICS PRIZE: For discovering that some people would be physically capable of running across the surface of a pond — if those people and that pond were on the moon. 
Alberto Minetti [ITALY, UK, DENMARK, SWITZERLAND], Yuri Ivanenko [ITALY, RUSSIA, FRANCE], Germana Cappellini [ITALY], Nadia Dominici [ITALY, SWITZERLAND], and Francesco Lacquaniti [ITALY].
CHEMISTRY PRIZE: For discovering that the biochemical process by which onions make people cry is even more complicated than scientists previously realized. 
Shinsuke Imai [JAPAN], Nobuaki Tsuge [JAPAN], Muneaki Tomotake [JAPAN], Yoshiaki Nagatome [JAPAN], H. Sawada [JAPAN],Toshiyuki Nagata [JAPAN, GERMANY], and Hidehiko Kumgai [JAPAN].
ARCHAEOLOGY PRIZE: For parboiling a dead shrew, and then swallowing the shrew without chewing, and then carefully examining everything excreted during subsequent days — all so they could see which bones would dissolve inside the human digestive system, and which bones would not. 
Brian Crandall [USA] and Peter Stahl [CANADA, USA].
PEACE PRIZE: For making it illegal to applaud in public, AND to the Belarus State Police, for arresting a one-armed man for applauding.
Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus. 
PROBABILITY PRIZE: For making two related discoveries: First, that the longer a cow has been lying down, the more likely that cow will soon stand up; and Second, that once a cow stands up, you cannot easily predict how soon that cow will lie down again. *
Bert Tolkamp [UK, the NETHERLANDS], Marie Haskell [UK], Fritha Langford [UK, CANADA], David Roberts [UK], and Colin Morgan [UK].
PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE: For the medical techniques described in their report "Surgical Management of an Epidemic of Penile Amputations in Siam" — techniques which they recommend, except in cases where the amputated penis had been partially eaten by a duck. 
Kasian Bhanganada, Tu Chayavatana, Chumporn Pongnumkul, Anunt Tonmukayakul, Piyasakol Sakolsatayadorn, Krit Komaratal, and Henry Wilde, [THAILAND]
PATTERN SEEKERS: Check out the interactive database of Ig Nobel Prize Winners created by the Silk company. Slice and dice the data as you please for unexpected correlations, and then create (and maybe share) the resulting visualizations.
 
2012

PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE: For their study "Leaning to the Left Makes the Eiffel Tower Seem Smaller" *
Anita Eerland and Rolf Zwaan [THE NETHERLANDS] and Tulio Guadalupe [PERU, RUSSIA, and THE NETHERLANDS] 
PEACE PRIZE: for converting old Russian ammunition into new diamonds.
ACOUSTICS PRIZE: For creating the SpeechJammer — a machine that disrupts a person's speech, by making them hear their own spoken words at a very slight delay.
Kazutaka Kurihara and Koji Tsukada [JAPAN] 
NEUROSCIENCE PRIZE: For demonstrating that brain researchers, by using complicated instruments and simple statistics, can see meaningful brain activity anywhere — even in a dead salmon. 
Craig Bennett, Abigail Baird, Michael Miller, and George Wolford [USA].
CHEMISTRY PRIZE:  For solving the puzzle of why, in certain houses in the town of Anderslöv, Sweden, people's hair turned green.
Johan Pettersson [SWEDEN and RWANDA].
LITERATURE PRIZE: For issuing a report about reports about reports that recommends the preparation of a report about the report about reports about reports.
The US Government General Accountability Office.
PHYSICS PRIZE:For calculating the balance of forces that shape and move the hair in a human ponytail.
 Joseph Keller [USA], and Raymond Goldstein [USA and UK], Patrick Warren, and Robin Ball [UK].
FLUID DYNAMICS PRIZE: For studying the dynamics of liquid-sloshing, to learn what happens when a person walks while carrying a cup of coffee.
Rouslan Krechetnikov [USA, RUSSIA, CANADA] and Hans Mayer [USA]. 
ANATOMY PRIZE: For discovering that chimpanzees can identify other chimpanzees individually from seeing photographs of their rear ends. 
Frans de Waal [The Netherlands and USA] and Jennifer Pokorny [USA]. 
MEDICINE PRIZE: For advising doctors who perform colonoscopies how to minimize the chance that their patients will explode.
Emmanuel Ben-Soussan and Michel Antonietti [FRANCE]. 

 
2011

 
PHYSIOLOGY PRIZE: For their study "No Evidence of Contagious Yawning in the Red-Footed Tortoise."
Anna Wilkinson (of the UK), Natalie Sebanz (of THE NETHERLANDS, HUNGARY, and AUSTRIA), Isabella Mandl (of AUSTRIA) and Ludwig Huber (of AUSTRIA). 
CHEMISTRY PRIZE: For determining the ideal density of airborne wasabi (pungent horseradish) to awaken sleeping people in case of a fire or other emergency, and for applying this knowledge to invent the wasabi alarm.
Makoto Imai, Naoki Urushihata, Hideki Tanemura, Yukinobu Tajima, Hideaki Goto, Koichiro Mizoguchi and Junichi Murakami of JAPAN. 
MEDICINE PRIZE: For demonstrating that people make better decisions about some kinds of things — but worse decisions about other kinds of things‚ when they have a strong urge to urinate.
Mirjam Tuk (THE NETHERLANDS,UK), Debra Trampe (THE NETHERLANDS) and Luk Warlop (BELGIUM). and jointly to Matthew Lewis, Peter Snyder and Robert Feldman (USA), Robert Pietrzak, David Darby, and Paul Maruff (of AUSTRALIA). 
PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE: For trying to understand why, in everyday life, people sigh.
Karl Halvor Teigen of the University of Oslo, NORWAY. 
LITERATURE PRIZE: For his Theory of Structured Procrastination, which says: To be a high achiever, always work on something important, using it as a way to avoid doing something that's even more important. 
John Perry of Stanford University, USA. 
BIOLOGY PRIZE: For discovering that a certain kind of beetle mates with a certain kind of Australian beer bottle.*
Darryl Gwynne (CANADA, AUSTRALIA,UK,USA) and David Rentz (AUSTRALIA,USA). 
PHYSICS PRIZE: For determining why discus throwers become dizzy, and why hammer throwers don't.
Philippe Perrin, Cyril Perrot, Dominique Deviterne and Bruno Ragaru (of FRANCE), and Herman Kingma (of THE NETHERLANDS).
MATHEMATICS PRIZE: Dorothy Martin of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1954), Pat Robertson of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1982), Elizabeth Clare Prophet of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1990), Lee Jang Rim of KOREA (who predicted the world would end in 1992), Credonia Mwerinde of UGANDA (who predicted the world would end in 1999), and Harold Camping of the USA (who predicted the world would end on September 6, 1994 and later predicted that the world will end on October 21, 2011), for teaching the world to be careful when making mathematical assumptions and calculations. 
PEACE PRIZE: For demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars can be solved by running them over with an armored tank.
Arturas Zuokas, the mayor of Vilnius, LITHUANIA. 
PUBLIC SAFETY PRIZE: For conducting a series of safety experiments in which a person drives an automobile on a major highway while a visor repeatedly flaps down over his face, blinding him. 
John Senders of the University of Toronto, CANADA.

 
2010

ENGINEERING PRIZE: For perfecting a method to collect whale snot, using a remote-control helicopter.
Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse and Agnes Rocha-Gosselin of the Zoological Society of London, UK, and Diane Gendron of Instituto Politecnico Nacional, Baja California Sur, Mexico.
MEDICINE PRIZE: For discovering that symptoms of asthma can be treated with a roller-coaster ride.
Simon Rietveld of the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and Ilja van Beest of Tilburg University, The Netherlands. 
TRANSPORTATION PLANNING PRIZE: For using slime mold to determine the optimal routes for railroad tracks.
Toshiyuki Nakagaki, Atsushi Tero, Seiji Takagi, Tetsu Saigusa, Kentaro Ito, Kenji Yumiki, Ryo Kobayashi of Japan, and Dan Bebber, Mark Fricker of the UK.
PHYSICS PRIZE: For demonstrating that, on icy footpaths in wintertime, people slip and fall less often if they wear socks on the outside of their shoes.
Lianne Parkin,Sheila Williams, and Patricia Priest of the University of Otago, New Zealand.
PEACE PRIZE: For confirming the widely held belief that swearing relieves pain.
Richard Stephens, John Atkins, and Andrew Kingston of Keele University, UK. 
PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE: For determining by experiment that microbes cling to bearded scientists.
Manuel Barbeito, Charles Mathews, and Larry Taylor of the Industrial Health and Safety Office, Fort Detrick, Maryland, USA.
ECONOMICS PRIZE: For creating and promoting new ways to invest money — ways that maximize financial gain and minimize financial risk for the world economy, or for a portion thereof.
The executives and directors of Goldman Sachs, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and Magnetar. 
CHEMISTRY PRIZE: For disproving the old belief that oil and water don't mix.
Eric Adams of MIT, Scott Socolofsky of Texas A&M University, Stephen Masutani of the University of Hawaii, and BP [British Petroleum]. 
MANAGEMENT PRIZE: For demonstrating mathematically that organizations would become more efficient if they promoted people at random.*
Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo of the University of Catania, Italy. 
BIOLOGY PRIZE: For scientifically documenting fellatio in fruit bats.
Libiao Zhang, Min Tan, Guangjian Zhu, Jianping Ye, Tiyu Hong, Shanyi Zhou, and Shuyi Zhang of China, and Gareth Jones of the University of Bristol, UK.

2009

VETERINARY MEDICINE PRIZE: For showing that cows who have names give more milk than cows that are nameless.*
Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson of Newcastle University, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK.
PEACE PRIZE: For determining — by experiment — whether it is better to be smashed over the head with a full bottle of beer or with an empty bottle.*
Stephan Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael Thali and Beat Kneubuehlof the University of Bern, Switzerland. 
ECONOMICS PRIZE: For demonstrating that tiny banks can be rapidly transformed into huge banks, and vice versa — and for demonstrating that similar things can be done to an entire national economy.
The directors, executives, and auditors of four Icelandic banks, Kaupthing Bank, Landsbanki, Glitnir Bank, and Central Bank of Iceland. 
CHEMISTRY PRIZE: For creating diamonds from liquid — specifically from tequila.
Javier Morales, Miguel Apátiga, and Victor M. Castaño of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
MEDICINE PRIZE: For investigating a possible cause of arthritis of the fingers, by diligently cracking the knuckles of his left hand — but never cracking the knuckles of his right hand — every day for more than sixty (60) years.
Donald L. Unger, of Thousand Oaks, California, USA. 
PHYSICS PRIZE: For analytically determining why pregnant women don't tip over.
Katherine K. Whitcome of the University of Cincinnati, USA, Daniel E. Liebermanof Harvard University, USA, and Liza J. Shapiro of the University of Texas, USA. 
LITERATURE PRIZE: For writing and presenting more than fifty traffic tickets to the most frequent driving offender in the country — Prawo Jazdy — whose name in Polish means "Driving License".
Ireland's police service (An Garda Siochana).
PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE: For inventing a brassiere that, in an emergency, can be quickly converted into a pair of protective face masks, one for the brassiere wearer and one to be given to some needy bystander.
Elena N. Bodnar, Raphael C. Lee, and Sandra Marijan of Chicago, Illinois, USA. 
MATHEMATICS PRIZE: For giving people a simple, everyday way to cope with a wide range of numbers — from very small to very big — by having his bank print bank notes with denominations ranging from one cent ($.01) to one hundred trillion dollars ($100,000,000,000,000).
Gideon Gono, governor of Zimbabwe’s Reserve Bank. 
BIOLOGY PRIZE: For demonstrating that kitchen refuse can be reduced more than 90% in mass by using bacteria extracted from the feces of giant pandas.
Fumiaki Taguchi, Song Guofu, and Zhang Guanglei of Kitasato University Graduate School of Medical Sciences in Sagamihara, Japan. 

 2008

NUTRITION PRIZE: For electronically modifying the sound of a potato chip to make the person chewing the chip believe it to be crisper and fresher than it really is.
Massimiliano Zampini of the University of Trento, Italy and Charles Spence of Oxford University, UK. 
PEACE PRIZE. For adopting the legal principle that plants have dignity.
The Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology (ECNH) and the citizens of Switzerland. 
ARCHAEOLOGY PRIZE. For measuring how the course of history, or at least the contents of an archaeological dig site, can be scrambled by the actions of a live armadillo.
Astolfo G. Mello Araujo and José Carlos Marcelino of Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil.
BIOLOGY PRIZE. For discovering that the fleas that live on a dog can jump higher than the fleas that live on a cat.
Marie-Christine Cadiergues, Christel Joubert, and  Michel Franc of Ecole Nationale Veterinaire de Toulouse, France. 
MEDICINE PRIZE. For demonstrating that high-priced fake medicine is more effective than low-priced fake medicine.
Dan Ariely of Duke University (USA), Rebecca L. Waber of MIT (USA), Baba Shiv of Stanford University (USA), and Ziv Carmon of INSEAD (Singapore). 
COGNITIVE SCIENCE PRIZE. For discovering that slime molds can solve puzzles.
Toshiyuki Nakagaki of Hokkaido University, Japan, Hiroyasu Yamada of Nagoya, Japan, Ryo Kobayashi of Hiroshima University, Atsushi Tero of Presto JST, Akio Ishiguro of Tohoku University, and Ágotá Tóth of the University of Szeged, Hungary. 
ECONOMICS PRIZE. For discovering that professional lap dancers earn higher tips when they are ovulating.
Geoffrey Miller, Joshua Tybur and Brent Jordan of the University of New Mexico, USA.
PHYSICS PRIZE. For proving mathematically that heaps of string or hair or almost anything else will inevitably tangle themselves up in knots.
Dorian Raymer of the Ocean Observatories Initiative at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, USA, and Douglas Smith of the University of California, San Diego, USA,
CHEMISTRY PRIZE. For discovering that Coca-Cola is an effective spermicide
Sharee A. Umpierre of the University of Puerto Rico, Joseph A. Hill of The Fertility Centers of New England (USA), Deborah J. Anderson of Boston University School of Medicine and Harvard Medical School (USA).
For discovering that it is not.
Chuang-Ye Hong of Taipei Medical University (Taiwan), C.C. Shieh, P. Wu, and B.N. Chiang (all of Taiwan). 
LITERATURE PRIZE. For his lovingly written study "You Bastard: A Narrative Exploration of the Experience of Indignation within Organizations"*
David Sims of Cass Business School. London, UK.

 2007

MEDICINE PRIZE: For their penetrating medical report "Sword Swallowing and Its Side Effects."
Brian Witcombe of Gloucester, UK, and Dan Meyer of Antioch, Tennessee, USA.
PHYSICS PRIZE: For studying how sheets become wrinkled.
L. Mahadevan of Harvard University, USA, and Enrique Cerda Villablanca of Universidad de Santiago de Chile.
BIOLOGY PRIZE: For doing a census of all the mites, insects, spiders, pseudoscorpions, crustaceans, bacteria, algae, ferns and fungi with whom we share our beds each night.
Prof. Dr. Johanna E.M.H. van Bronswijk of Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands. 
CHEMISTRY PRIZE: For developing a way to extract vanillin -- vanilla fragrance and flavoring -- from cow dung.
Mayu Yamamoto of the International Medical Center of Japan. 
LINGUISTICS PRIZE: For showing that rats sometimes cannot tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and a person speaking Dutch backwards.*
Juan Manuel Toro, Josep B. Trobalon and Núria Sebastián-Gallés, of Universitat de Barcelona.
LITERATURE PRIZE: For her study of the word "the" -- and of the many ways it causes problems for anyone who tries to put things into alphabetical order.*
Glenda Browne of Blaxland, Blue Mountains, Australia.
PEACE PRIZE: For instigating research & development on a chemical weapon -- the so-called "gay bomb" -- that will make enemy soldiers become sexually irresistible to each other.
The Air Force Wright Laboratory, Dayton, Ohio, USA. 
NUTRITION PRIZE: For exploring the seemingly boundless appetites of human beings, by feeding them with a self-refilling, bottomless bowl of soup.
Brian Wansink of Cornell University.
ECONOMICS PRIZE: For patenting a device, in the year 2001, that catches bank robbers by dropping a net over them. 
Kuo Cheng Hsieh, of Taichung, Taiwan.
AVIATION PRIZE: For their discovery that Viagra aids jetlag recovery in hamsters. 
Patricia V. Agostino, Santiago A. Plano and Diego A. Golombek of Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Argentina.

2006

ORNITHOLOGY PRIZE: For exploring and explaining why woodpeckers don't get headaches.
Ivan R. Schwab, of the University of California Davis, and the late Philip R.A. May of the University of California Los Angeles. 
NUTRITION PRIZE: For showing that dung beetles are finicky eaters. 
Wasmia Al-Houty of Kuwait University and Faten Al-Mussalam of the Kuwait Environment Public Authority. 
PEACE PRIZE: For inventing an electromechanical teenager repellant -- a device that makes annoying high-pitched noise designed to be audible to teenagers but not to adults; and for later using that same technology to make telephone ringtones that are audible to teenagers but probably not to their teachers.
Howard Stapleton of Merthyr Tydfil, Wales. 
ACOUSTICS PRIZE: For conducting experiments to learn why people dislike the sound of fingernails scraping on a blackboard.
D. Lynn Halpern (Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, and Brandeis University, and Northwestern University), Randolph Blake (Vanderbilt University and Northwestern University) and James Hillenbrand (Western Michigan University and Northwestern University)
MATHEMATICS PRIZE: For calculating the number of photographs you must take to (almost) ensure that nobody in a group photo will have their eyes closed.*
Nic Svenson and Piers Barnes of the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization.
LITERATURE PRIZE: For his report "Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly." 
Daniel Oppenheimer of Princeton University. 
MEDICINE PRIZE: For their subsequent medical case report also titled "Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage."
Francis M. Fesmire of the University of Tennessee College of Medicine, for his medical case report "Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage"; and Majed Odeh, Harry Bassan, and Arie Oliven of Bnai Zion Medical Center, Haifa, Israel.
PHYSICS PRIZE: For their insights into why, when you bend dry spaghetti, it often breaks into more than two pieces. *
Basile Audoly and Sebastien Neukirch of the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, in Paris. 
CHEMISTRY PRIZE: For their study "Ultrasonic Velocity in Cheddar Cheese as Affected by Temperature."
Antonio Mulet, José Javier Benedito and José Bon of the University of Valencia, Spain, and Carmen Rosselló of the University of Illes Balears, in Palma de Mallorca, Spain.
BIOLOGY PRIZE: For showing that the female malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae is attracted equally to the smell of limburger cheese and to the smell of human feet. 
Bart Knols (of Wageningen Agricultural University, in Wageningen, the Netherlands; and of the National Institute for Medical Research, in Ifakara Centre, Tanzania, and of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Vienna Austria) and Ruurd de Jong (of Wageningen Agricultural University and of Santa Maria degli Angeli, Italy).

 2005

AGRICULTURAL HISTORY: For his scholarly study, "The Significance of Mr. Richard Buckley’s Exploding Trousers. "
James Watson of Massey University, New Zealand.
PHYSICS: For patiently conducting an experiment that began in the year 1927 -- in which a glob of congealed black tar has been slowly, slowly dripping through a funnel, at a rate of approximately one drop every nine years.*
John Mainstone and the late Thomas Parnell of the University of Queensland, Australia. 
MEDICINE: For inventing Neuticles -- artificial replacement testicles for dogs, which are available in three sizes, and three degrees of firmness.
Gregg A. Miller of Oak Grove, Missouri.
LITERATURE: For creating and then using e-mail to distribute a bold series of short stories, thus introducing millions of readers to a cast of rich characters -- General Sani Abacha, Mrs. Mariam Sanni Abacha, Barrister Jon A Mbeki Esq., and others -- each of whom requires just a small amount of expense money so as to obtain access to the great wealth to which they are entitled and which they would like to share with the kind person who assists them.
The Internet entrepreneurs of Nigeria.
PEACE: For electrically monitoring the activity of a brain cell in a locust while that locust was watching selected highlights from the movie "Star Wars."
Claire Rind and Peter Simmons of Newcastle University, in the U.K. 
ECONOMICS: For inventing an alarm clock that runs away and hides, repeatedly, thus ensuring that people DO get out of bed, and thus theoretically adding many productive hours to the workday.
Gauri Nanda of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
CHEMISTRY: For conducting a careful experiment to settle the longstanding scientific question: can people swim faster in syrup or in water?
Edward Cussler of the University of Minnesota and Brian Gettelfinger of the University of Minnesota and the University of Wisconsin.
BIOLOGY: For painstakingly smelling and cataloging the peculiar odors produced by 131 different species of frogs when the frogs were feeling stressed.
Benjamin Smith, Australia, Canada and the Firmenich perfume company, Geneva, Switzerland, and ChemComm Enterprises, Archamps, France; Craig Williams of James Cook, Australia; Michael Tyler; Brian Williams; and Yoji Hayasaka, Australia.
NUTRITION: For photographing and retrospectively analyzing every meal he has consumed during a period of 34 years (and counting). 
Dr. Yoshiro Nakamats of Tokyo, Japan. 
FLUID DYNAMICS: For using basic principles of physics to calculate the pressure that builds up inside a penguin, as detailed in their report "Pressures Produced When Penguins Pooh -- Calculations on Avian Defaecation."
Victor Benno Meyer-Rochow of International University Bremen, Germany and the University of Oulu, Finland; and Jozsef Gal of Loránd Eötvös University, Hungary. 

2004

MEDICINE: For their published report "The Effect of Country Music on Suicide."
Steven Stack of Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA and James Gundlach of Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama, USA. 
PHYSICS: For exploring and explaining the dynamics of hula-hooping.
Ramesh Balasubramaniam of the University of Ottawa, and Michael Turvey of the University of Connecticut and Haskins Laboratory. 
PUBLIC HEALTH: For investigating the scientific validity of the Five-Second Rule about whether it's safe to eat food that's been dropped on the floor. 
Jillian Clarke of the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences, and then Howard University.
CHEMISTRY: For using advanced technology to convert ordinary tap water into Dasani, a transparent form of water, which for precautionary reasons has been made unavailable to consumers.
The Coca-Cola Company of Great Britain.
ENGINEERING: For patenting the combover.
Donald J. Smith and his father, the late Frank J. Smith, of Orlando Florida, USA.
LITERATURE: For preserving nudist history so that everyone can see it.
The American Nudist Research Library of Kissimmee, Florida, USA.
PSYCHOLOGY: For demonstrating that when people pay close attention to something, it's all too easy to overlook anything else -- even a woman in a gorilla suit. 
Daniel Simons of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Christopher Chabris of Harvard University. 
ECONOMICS: For outsourcing prayers to India.
The Vatican. 
PEACE: For inventing karaoke, thereby providing an entirely new wayfor people to learn to tolerate each other.
Daisuke Inoue of Hyogo, Japan.
BIOLOGY: For showing that herrings apparently communicate by farting.
Ben Wilson of the University of British Columbia, Lawrence Dill of Simon Fraser University [Canada], Robert Batty of the Scottish Association for Marine Science, Magnus Whalberg of the University of Aarhus [Denmark], and Hakan Westerberg of Sweden's National Board of Fisheries.

2003

ENGINEERING: For jointly giving birth in 1949 to Murphy's Law, the basic engineering principle that "If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, someone will do it "(or, in other words: "If anything can go wrong, it will").
The late John Paul Stapp, the late Edward A. Murphy, Jr., and George Nichols.
PHYSICS: For their irresistible report "An Analysis of the Forces Required to Drag Sheep over Various Surfaces."
Jack Harvey, John Culvenor, Warren Payne, Steve Cowley, Michael Lawrance, David Stuart, and Robyn Williams of Australia.
MEDICINE: For presenting evidence that the brains of London taxi drivers are more highly developed than those of their fellow citizens.
Eleanor Maguire,  David Gadian, Ingrid Johnsrude, Catriona Good, John Ashburner, Richard Frackowiak, and Christopher Frith of University College London.
PSYCHOLOGY: For their discerning report "Politicians' Uniquely Simple Personalities."
Gian Vittorio Caprara and Claudio Barbaranelli of the University of Rome, and Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University.
CHEMISTRY: For his chemical investigation of a bronze statue, in the city of Kanazawa, that fails to attract pigeons.
Yukio Hirose of Kanazawa University.
LITERATURE: For meticulously collecting data and publishing more than 80 detailed academic reports about things that annoyed him
(such as: What percentage of young people wear baseball caps with the peak facing to the rear rather than to the front; What percentage of pedestrians wear sport shoes that are white rather than some other color; What percentage of swimmers swim laps in the shallow end of a pool rather than the deep end; What percentage of automobile drivers almost, but not completely, come to a stop at one particular stop-sign; What percentage of commuters carry attaché cases; What percentage of shoppers exceed the number of items permitted in a supermarket's express checkout lane; and What percentage of students dislike the taste of Brussels sprouts.)
John Trinkaus, of the Zicklin School of Business, New York City. 
ECONOMICS: For making it possible to rent the entire country for corporate conventions, weddings, bar mitzvahs, and other gatherings.
Karl Schwärzler and the nation of Liechtenstein. 
INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH: For their inevitable report "Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans."
Stefano Ghirlanda,  Liselotte Jansson, and Magnus Enquist of Stockholm University.
PEACE: For a triple accomplishment: First, for leading an active life even though he has been declared legally dead; Second, for waging a lively posthumous campaign against bureaucratic inertia and greedy relatives; and Third, for creating the Association of Dead People.*
Lal Bihari, of Uttar Pradesh, India.
BIOLOGY: For documenting the first scientifically recorded case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck.
C.W. Moeliker, of Natuurhistorisch Museum Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

2002

BIOLOGY: For their report "Courtship Behaviour of Ostriches Towards Humans Under Farming Conditions in Britain."
N. Bubier, Charles G.M. Paxton, Phil Bowers, and D. Charles Deeming of the United Kingdom.
PHYSICS: For demonstrating that beer froth obeys the mathematical Law of Exponential Decay. 
Arnd Leike of the University of Munich.
INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH: For performing a comprehensive survey of human belly button lint -- who gets it, when, what color, and how much.
Karl Kruszelnicki of The University of Sydney.
CHEMISTRY: For gathering many elements of the periodic table, and assembling them into the form of a four-legged periodic table table.
Theodore Gray (USA and Switzerland).
MATHEMATICS:  For their analytical report "Estimation of the Total Surface Area in Indian Elephants."*
K.P. Sreekumar and the late G. Nirmalan of Kerala Agricultural University, India.
LITERATURE: For their colorful report "The Effects of Pre-Existing Inappropriate Highlighting on Reading Comprehension."  *
Vicki Silvers Gier and David S. Kreiner of Central Missouri State University.
PEACE: For promoting peace and harmony between the species by inventing Bow-Lingual, a computer-based automatic dog-to-human language translation device.
Keita Sato, President of Takara Co., Dr. Matsumi Suzuki, President of Japan Acoustic Lab, and Dr. Norio Kogure, Executive Director, Kogure Veterinary Hospital.
HYGIENE:  For inventing a washing machine for cats and dogs. 
Eduardo Segura, of Lavakan de Aste, in Tarragona, Spain.
ECONOMICS: For adapting the mathematical concept of imaginary numbers for use in the business world.  *
The executives, corporate directors, and auditors of Enron, Lernaut & Hauspie [Belgium], Adelphia, Bank of Commerce and Credit International [Pakistan], Cendant, CMS Energy, Duke Energy, Dynegy, Gazprom [Russia], Global Crossing, HIH Insurance [Australia], Informix, Kmart, Maxwell Communications [UK], McKessonHBOC, Merrill Lynch, Merck, Peregrine Systems, Qwest Communications, Reliant Resources, Rent-Way, Rite Aid, Sunbeam, Tyco, Waste Management, WorldCom, Xerox, and Arthur Andersen.
MEDICINE: For his excruciatingly balanced report, "Scrotal Asymmetry in Man and in Ancient Sculpture."  
Chris McManus of University College London,

2001

MEDICINE: For his impactful medical report "InjuriesDue to Falling Coconuts." 
Peter Barss of McGill University.
PHYSICS: For his partial solution to the question of why shower curtains billow inwards.*
David Schmidt of the University of Massachusetts.
BIOLOGY: For inventing Under-Ease, airtight underwear with a replaceable charcoal filter that removes bad-smelling gases before they escape.
Buck Weimer of Pueblo, Colorado. 
ECONOMICS: For their conclusion that people find a way to postpone their deaths if that would qualify them for a lower rate on the inheritance tax. 
Joel Slemrod, of the University of Michigan Business School, and Wojciech Kopczuk, of University of British Columbia.
LITERATURE: For his efforts to protect, promote, and defend the differences between plural and possessive.
John Richards of Boston, England, founder of The Apostrophe Protection Society.
PSYCHOLOGY: For his influential research report "An Ecological Study of Glee in Small Groups of Preschool Children." 
Lawrence W. Sherman of Miami University, Ohio.
ASTROPHYSICS: For their discovery that black holes fulfill all the technical requirements to be the location of Hell. 
Dr. Jack and Rexella Van Impe of Jack Van Impe Ministries, Rochester Hills, Michigan.
PEACE: For creating the amusement park known as "Stalin World."
Viliumas Malinauskus of Grutas, Lithuania.
TECHNOLOGY: For patenting the wheel, a  "circular transportation facilitation device," in the year 2001, and to the Australian Patent Office for granting him Innovation Patent #2001100012. [NOTE: Several years after this prize was awarded, the patent office quietly revoked Mr. Keogh's patent.]*
Awarded jointly to John Keogh of Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia. 
PUBLIC HEALTH: For their probing medical discovery that nose picking is a common activity among adolescents. 
Chittaranjan Andrade and B.S. Srihari of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore, India.
 
2000

PSYCHOLOGY: For their modest report, "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments." 
David Dunning of Cornell University and Justin Kruger of the University of Illinois.
LITERATURE: For her book "Living on Light," which explains that although some people do eat food, they don't ever really need to. 
Jasmuheen (formerly known as Ellen Greve) of Australia,  first lady of Breatharianism. 
BIOLOGY: For his first-hand report, "On the Comparative Palatability of Some Dry-Season Tadpoles from Costa Rica."  
Richard Wassersug of Dalhousie University.
PHYSICS: For using magnets to levitate a frog. 
Andre Geim of the University of Nijmegen (the Netherlands) and Sir Michael Berry of Bristol University (UK). NOTE: Ten years later, in 2010, Andre Geim won a Nobel Prize in physics (for research on another subject).*
CHEMISTRY: For their discovery that, biochemically, romantic love may be indistinguishable from having severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. 
Donatella Marazziti, Alessandra Rossi, and Giovanni B. Cassano of the University of Pisa, and Hagop S. Akiskal of the University of California (San Diego).  
ECONOMICS: For bringing efficiency and steady growth to the mass-marriage industry, with, according to his reports, a 36-couple wedding in 1960, a 430-couple wedding in 1968, an 1800-couple wedding in 1975, a 6000-couple wedding in 1982, a 30,000-couple wedding in 1992, a 360,000-couple wedding in 1995, and a 36,000,000-couple wedding in 1997. 
The "Reverend Sun Myung Moon.
MEDICINE: For their illuminating report, "Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Male and Female Genitals During Coitus and Female Sexual Arousal."  Willibrord Weijmar Schultz, Pek van Andel, and Eduard Mooyaart of Groningen, The Netherlands, and Ida Sabelis of Amsterdam.
COMPUTER SCIENCE: For inventing PawSense,  software that detects when a cat is walking across your computer keyboard. 
Chris Niswander of Tucson, Arizona.
PEACE: For ordering its sailors to stop using live cannon shells, and to instead just shout "Bang!
The British Royal Navy.
PUBLIC HEALTH: For their alarming report, "The Collapse of Toilets in Glasgow."  
Jonathan Wyatt, Gordon McNaughton, and William Tullett of Glasgow.

1999

SOCIOLOGY:  For doing his PhD thesis on the sociology of Canadian donut shops.
Steve Penfold, of York University in Toronto.
PHYSICS: For calculating the optimal way to dunk a biscuit, and  Jean-Marc Vanden-Broeck of the [UK and Belgium], and Joseph Keller [USA] for calculating how to make a teapot spout that does not drip.
Len Fisher [UK and Australia]
LITERATURE: For its six-page specification (BS-6008) of the proper way to make a cup of tea. 
The British Standards Institution.
SCIENCE 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. 
The Kansas State Board of Education and the Colorado State Board of Education.
MEDICINE: For carefully collecting, classifying, and contemplating which kinds of containers his patients chose when submitting urine samples.
Dr. Arvid Vatle of Stord, Norway.  
CHEMISTRY: For his involvement with S-Check, an infidelity detection spray that wives can apply to their husbands' underwear. 
Takeshi Makino, president of The Safety Detective Agency in Osaka, Japan.
BIOLOGY: For breeding a spiceless jalapeno chile pepper. 
Dr. Paul Bosland, director of The Chile Pepper Institute, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico.
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION: For inventing the self-perfuming business suit. 
Hyuk-ho Kwon of Kolon Company of Seoul, Korea.
PEACE: For inventing an automobile burglar alarm consisting of a detection circuit and a flamethrower. (  "A Security System for a Vehicle") 
Charl Fourie and Michelle Wong of Johannesburg, South Africa
MANAGED HEALTH CARE: For inventing a device  to aid women in giving birth — the woman is strapped onto a circular table, and the table is then rotated at high speed.  

The late George and Charlotte Blonsky of New York City and San Jose, California.

1998

SAFETY ENGINEERING:  for developing, and personally testing a suit of armor that is impervious to grizzly bears.  
Troy Hurtubise, of North Bay, Ontario.
BIOLOGY: For contributing to the happiness of clams by giving them Prozac. 
Peter Fong of Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
PEACE: For their aggressively peaceful explosions of atomic bombs. 
Prime Minister Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee of India and Prime  Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan. 
CHEMISTRY: For his homeopathic discovery that not only does water have memory, but that the information can be transmitted over telephone lines and the Internet. 
Jacques Benveniste of France. NOTE: Benveniste also won the 1991 Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize.
SCIENCE EDUCATION: 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. 
Dolores Krieger, Professor Emerita, New York University. 
STATISTICS: For their carefully measured report, "The Relationships Among Height, Penile Length, and Foot Size."
Jerald Bain of Mt. Sinai Hospital in Toronto and Kerry Siminoski of the University of Alberta. 
PHYSICS. For his unique interpretation of quantum physics as it applies to life, liberty, and the pursuit of economic happiness.
Deepak Chopra of The Chopra Center for Well Being, La Jolla, California.
ECONOMICS. For his efforts to stoke up the world economy by cloning himself and other human beings. 
Richard Seed  of Chicago.
MEDICINE: For the cautionary medical report, "A Man Who Pricked His Finger and Smelled Putrid for 5 Years." 
To Patient Y and to his doctors, Caroline Mills, Meirion Llewelyn, David Kelly, and Peter Holt, of Royal Gwent Hospital, in Newport, Wales.
LITERATURE: For her illuminating report, "Farting as a Defence Against Unspeakable Dread."
Dr. Mara Sidoli of Washington, DC. 

1997

BIOLOGY: For measuring people's brainwave patterns while they chewed different flavors of gum. 
T. Yagyu and his colleagues from the University Hospital of Zurich, Switzerland, from Kansai Medical University in Osaka, Japan, and from Neuroscience Technology Research in Prague, Czech Republic.
ENTOMOLOGY: For his scholarly book, "That Gunk on Your Car," which identifies the insect splats that appear on automobile windows. 
Mark Hostetler of the University of Florida, 
ASTRONOMY: 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.  
Richard Hoagland of New Jersey.
COMMUNICATIONS: Neither rain nor sleet nor dark of night have stayed this self-appointed courier from delivering electronic junk mail to all the world. 
Sanford Wallace, president of Cyber Promotions of Philadelphia. 
PHYSICS: For his wide-ranging achievements in cold fusion, in the transmutation of base elements into gold, and in the electrochemical incineration of domestic rubbish. 
John Bockris of Texas A&M University.
LITERATURE: For their  hairsplitting statistical discovery that the bible contains a secret, hidden code. 
Doron Witztum, Eliyahu Rips and Yoav Rosenberg of Israel, and Michael Drosnin of the United States.
MEDICINE: For their discovery that listening to elevator Muzak stimulates immunoblobulin A (IgA) production, and thus may help prevent the common cold.
Carl J. Charnetski and Francis X. Brennan, Jr. of Wilkes University, and James F. Harrison of Muzak Ltd. in Seattle, Washington.
ECONOMICS: For diverting millions of person-hours of work into the husbandry of virtual pets. 
Akihiro Yokoi of Wiz Company in Chiba, Japan and Aki Maita of Bandai Company in Tokyo, the father and mother of  Tamagotchi.
PEACE: For his lovingly rendered and ultimately peaceful report "The Possible Pain Experienced During Execution by Different Methods."  
Harold Hillman of the University of Surrey, England.
METEOROLOGY: For his revealing report, "Chicken Plucking as Measure of Tornado Wind Speed."  
Bernard Vonnegut of the State University of Albany

1996

BIOLOGY: For their tasty and tasteful report, "Effect of Ale, Garlic, and Soured Cream on the Appetite of Leeches."
Anders Barheim and Hogne Sandvik of the University of Bergen, Norway. 
MEDICINE: For their unshakable discovery, as testified to the U.S. Congress, that nicotine is not addictive. 
James Johnston of R.J. Reynolds, Joseph Taddeo of U.S. Tobacco, Andrew Tisch of Lorillard, William Campbell of Philip Morris, Edward A. Horrigan of Liggett Group, Donald S. Johnston of American Tobacco Company, and the late Thomas E. Sandefur, Jr., chairman of Brown and Williamson Tobacco Co.
PHYSICS:  For his studies of Murphy's Law, and especially for demonstrating that toast often falls on the buttered side.
Robert Matthews of Aston University, England. 
PEACE: For commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Hiroshima with atomic bomb tests in the Pacific. 
Jacques Chirac, President of France.
PUBLIC HEALTH: For their cautionary medical report "Transmission of Gonorrhea Through an Inflatable Doll."
Ellen Kleist of Nuuk, Greenland and Harald Moi of Oslo, Norway. 
CHEMISTRY:  For his blistering world record time for igniting a barbeque grill-three seconds, using charcoal and liquid oxygen. 
George Goble of Purdue University.
BIODIVERSITY:  For discovering the fossils of dinosaurs, horses, dragons, princesses, and more than 1000 other extinct "mini-species," each of which is less than 1/100 of an inch in length.
Chonosuke Okamura of the Okamura Fossil Laboratory in Nagoya, Japan.
LITERATURE: for eagerly publishing research that they could not understand, that the author said was meaningless, and which claimed that reality does not exist.
The editors of the journal "Social Text" 
ECONOMICS: For his discovery that "financial strain is a risk indicator for destructive periodontal disease.
Dr. Robert J. Genco of the University of Buffalo 
ART: For his ornamentally evolutionary invention, the plastic pink flamingo. 
Don Featherstone of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, 

1995

NUTRITION: For educating the world about Luak Coffee, the world's most expensive coffee, which is made from coffee beans ingested and excreted by the luak (aka, the palm civet), a bobcat-like animal native to Indonesia. 
John Martinez of J. Martinez & Company in Atlanta, Georgia. 
PHYSICS: For their rigorous analysis of soggy breakfast cereal, published in the report entitled "A Study of the Effects of Water Content on the Compaction Behaviour of Breakfast Cereal Flakes."
D.M.R. Georget, R. Parker, and A.C. Smith, of the Institute of Food Research, Norwich, England.
ECONOMICS: For using the calculus of derivatives to demonstrate that every financial institution has its limits.
Nick Leeson and his superiors at Barings Bank and to Robert Citronof Orange County, California.
MEDICINE: For their invigorating study entitled "The Effects of Unilateral Forced Nostril Breathing on Cognition."
Marcia E. Buebel, David S. Shannahoff-Khalsa, and Michael R. Boyle.
LITERATURE: For their deeply penetrating research report, "Rectal foreign bodies: Case Reports and a Comprehensive Review of the World's Literature." The citations include reports of, among other items: seven light bulbs; a knife sharpener; two flashlights; a wire spring; a snuff box; an oil can with potato stopper; eleven different forms of fruits, vegetables and other foodstuffs; a jeweler's saw; a frozen pig's tail; a tin cup; a beer glass; and one patient's remarkable ensemble collection consisting of spectacles, a suitcase key, a tobacco pouch and a magazine. *
David B. Busch and James R. Starling, of Madison Wisconsin.
PEACE: For demonstrating that politicians gain more by punching, kicking and gouging each other than by waging war against other nations. 
The Taiwan National Parliament.
PSYCHOLOGY: For their success in training pigeons to discriminate between the paintings of Picasso and those of Monet. 
Shigeru Watanabe, Junko Sakamoto, and Masumi Wakita, of Keio University.
PUBLIC HEALTH: For their exhaustive study, "Impact of Wet Underwear on Thermoregulatory Responses and Thermal Comfort in the Cold."
Martha Kold Bakkevig of Sintef Unimed in Trondheim, Norway, and Ruth Nielsen of the Technical University of Denmark.
DENTISTRY: For his incisive study "Patient Preference for Waxed or Unwaxed Dental Floss." 
Robert H. Beaumont, of Shoreview, Minnesota.
CHEMISTRY: For creating DNA Cologne and DNA PERFUME, neither of which contain deoxyribonucleic acid, and both of which come in a triple helix bottle.  
Bijan Pakzad of Beverly Hills.

1994 

BIOLOGY: For their breakthrough study, "The Constipated Serviceman: Prevalence Among Deployed US Troops," and especially for their numerical analysis of bowel movement frequency.  
W. Brian Sweeney, Brian Krafte-Jacobs, Jeffrey W. Britton, and Wayne Hansen.
PEACE: Promulgator of peaceful thoughts, for his experimental conclusion that 4,000 trained meditators caused an 18 percent decrease in violent crime in Washington, D.C. 
John Hagelin of Maharishi University and The Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy.
MEDICINE: For his determined use of electroshock therapy -- at his own insistence, automobile sparkplug wires were attached to his lip, and the car engine revved to 3000 rpm for five minutes.
Patient X, formerly of the US Marine Corps, valiant victim of a venomous bite from his pet rattlesnake.  
For their well-grounded medical report: "Failure of Electric Shock Treatment for Rattlesnake Envenomation." 

Dr. Richard C. Dart of the Rocky Mountain Poison Center and Dr. Richard A. Gustafson of The University of Arizona Health Sciences Centre. 
ENTOMOLOGY: For his series of experiments in obtaining ear mites from cats, inserting them into his own ear, and carefully observing and analyzing the results.  
Robert A. Lopez of Westport, NY, valiant veterinarian and friend of all creatures great and small.
PSYCHOLOGY: For his thirty-year study of the effects of punishing three million citizens of Singapore whenever they spat, chewed gum, or fed pigeons. 
Lee Kuan Yew, former Prime Minister of Singapore, practitioner of the psychology of negative reinforcement.
LITERATURE: For his crackling Good Book, "Dianetics," which is highly profitable to mankind or to a portion thereof. 
L. Ron Hubbard, ardent author of science fiction and founding father of Scientology.
CHEMISTRY: For sponsoring the 1989 drug control law which make it illegal to purchase beakers, flasks, test tubes, or other  laboratory glassware without a permit. 
Texas State Senator Bob Glasgow, wise writer of logical legislation.
ECONOMICS: For instructing his computer to "buy" when he meant "sell," and subsequently attempting to recoup his losses by making increasingly unprofitable trades that ultimately lost .5 percent of Chile's gross national product. Davila's relentless achievement inspired his countrymen to coin a new verb: " davilar," meaning, "to botch things up royally." *
 Jan Pablo Davila of Chile, tireless trader of financial futures and former employee of the state-owned Codelco Company. 
MATHEMATICS: For their county-by-county estimate of how many Alabama citizens will go to Hell if they don't repent.
The Southern Baptist Church of Alabama, mathematical measurers of morality.
 
1993

PSYCHOLOGY: For their leaping conclusion that people who believe they were kidnapped by aliens from outer space, probably were — and especially for their conclusion "the focus of the abduction is the production of children.  
John Mack of Harvard Medical School and David Jacobs of Temple University, mental visionaries.
CONSUMER ENGINEERING: For redefining the industrial revolution with such devices as the Veg-O-Matic, the Pocket Fisherman, Mr. Microphone, and the Inside-the-Shell Egg Scrambler. 
Ron Popeil, incessant inventor and perpetual pitchman of late night television.
BIOLOGY: For their pioneering study, "Salmonella Excretion in Joy-Riding Pigs."  
Paul Williams Jr. of the Oregon State Health Division and Kenneth W. Newell of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, bold biological detectives.
ECONOMICS: For selling enough copies of his books to single-handedly prevent worldwide economic collapse. 
Ravi Batra of Southern Methodist University, shrewd economist and best-selling author of "The Great Depression of 1990" ($17.95) and "Surviving the Great Depression of 1990" ($18.95).
PEACE: For sponsoring a contest to create a millionaire, and then announcing the wrong winning number, thereby inciting and uniting 800,000 riotously expectant winners, and bringing many warring factions together for the first time in their nation's history. 
The Pepsi-Cola Company of the Phillipines, suppliers of sugary hopes and dreams.
VISIONARY TECHNOLOGY: Crack inventor of AutoVision, an image projection device that makes it possible to drive a car and watch television at the same time, and to the Michigan state legislature, for making it legal to do so. 
 Jay Schiffman of Farmington Hills, Michigan. 
CHEMISTRY: For inventing scent strips, the odious method by which perfume is applied to magazine pages. 
James Campbell and Gaines Campbell of Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, dedicated deliverers of fragrance. 
LITERATURE: For publishing a medical research paper which has one hundred times as many authors as pages. 
Eric Topol, R. Califf, F. Van de Werf, P. W. Armstrong, and their 972 co-authors. The authors are from the following countries: Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States.
MATHEMATICS: For calculating the exact odds (710,609,175,188,282,000 to 1) that Mikhail Gorbachev is the Antichrist.  
Robert Faid of Greenville, South Carolina, farsighted and faithful seer of statistics.
PHYSICS: For his conclusion that the calcium in chickens' eggshells is created by a process of cold fusion. 
Louis Kervran of France, ardent admirer of alchemy.
MEDICINE: For their painstaking research report, "Acute Management of the Zipper-Entrapped Penis."  
James F. Nolan, Thomas J. Stillwell, and John P. Sands, Jr., medical men of mercy,

1992

MEDICINE: For their pioneering research study "Elucidation of Chemical Compounds Responsible for Foot Malodour," especially for their conclusion that people who think they have foot odor do, and those who don't, don't.  
F. Kanda, E. Yagi, M. Fukuda, K. Nakajima, T. Ohta and O. Nakata of the Shisedo Research Center in Yokohama.
ARCHEOLOGY: For erasing the ancient paintings from the walls of the Meyrieres Cave near the French village of Bruniquel.
Eclaireurs de France, the Protestant youth group whose name means"those who show the way," fresh-scrubbed removers of grafitti, 
ECONOMICS: For their bold attempt to insure disaster by refusing to pay for their company's losses.
The investors of Lloyds of London, heirs to 300 years of dull prudent management.
BIOLOGY: For devising a simple, single-handed method of quality control.  
Dr. Cecil Jacobson, relentlessly generous sperm donor, and prolific patriarch of sperm banking.
CHEMISTRY:For her role in the crowning achievement of twentieth century chemistry, the synthesis of bright blue Jell-O.
 Ivette Bassa, constructor of colorful colloids.
PHYSICS: For their circular contributions to field theory based on the  geometrical destruction of English crops.
David Chorley and Doug Bower, lions of low-energy physics.
PEACE: For his uniquely compelling methods of bringing people together. 
Daryl Gates, former Police Chief of the City of Los Angeles.
NUTRITION: For 54 years of undiscriminating digestion.
The utilizers of Spam, courageous consumers of canned comestibles.
LITERATURE: For the 948 scientific papers he is credited with publishing between the years 1981 and 1990, averaging more than one every 3.9 days.
Yuri Struchkov, unstoppable author from the Institute of Organoelemental Compounds in Moscow.
ART: For his classic anatomy poster "Penises of the Animal Kingdom," 
Presented jointly to Jim Knowlton, modern Renaissance man. 
For encouraging Mr. Knowlton to extend his work in the form of a pop-up book.
 The U.S. National Endowment for the Arts, 

1991

CHEMISTRY: For his persistent discovery that water, H2O, is an intelligent liquid, and for demonstrating to his satisfaction that water is able to remember events long after all trace of those events has vanished.
Jacques Benveniste, prolific proseletizer and dedicated correspondent of "Nature".
MEDICINE: For his pioneering work with anti-gas liquids that prevent bloat, gassiness, discomfort and embarrassment.
Alan Kligerman, deviser of digestive deliverance, vanquisher of vapor, and inventor of Beano. 
EDUCATION: For demonstrating,better than anyone else, the need for science education.
J. Danforth Quayle, consumer of time and occupier of space.
BIOLOGY: For his pioneering development of the Repository for Germinal Choice, a sperm bank that accepts donations only from Nobellians and Olympians.
Robert Klark Graham, selector of seeds and prophet of propagation.
ECONOMICS: Titan of Wall Street and father of the junk bond, to whom the world is indebted.
Michael Milken.
LITERATURE: For explaining how human civilization was influenced by ancient astronauts from outer space.
Erich Von Daniken, visionary raconteur and author of "Chariots of the Gods".
PEACE: For his lifelong efforts to change the meaning of peace as we know it.
Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb and first champion of the Star Wars weapons system. 
The SKN Company [RUSSIA], 
ACOUSTICS PRIZE: For creating the SpeechJammer — a machine that disrupts a person's speech, by making them hear their own spoken words at a very slight delay. 
Kazutaka Kurihara and Koji Tsukada [JAPAN] 
NEUROSCIENCE PRIZE: For demonstrating that brain researchers, by using complicated instruments and simple statistics, can see meaningful brain activity anywhere — even in a dead salmon. 
Craig Bennett, Abigail Baird, Michael Miller, and George Wolford [USA].
CHEMISTRY PRIZE:  For solving the puzzle of why, in certain houses in the town of Anderslöv, Sweden, people's hair turned green.
Johan Pettersson [SWEDEN and RWANDA].
LITERATURE PRIZE: For issuing a report about reports about reports that recommends the preparation of a report about the report about reports about reports.
The US Government General Accountability Office.
PHYSICS PRIZE:For calculating the balance of forces that shape and move the hair in a human ponytail.
 Joseph Keller [USA], and Raymond Goldstein [USA and UK], Patrick Warren, and Robin Ball [UK].
FLUID DYNAMICS PRIZE: For studying the dynamics of liquid-sloshing, to learn what happens when a person walks while carrying a cup of coffee.
Rouslan Krechetnikov [USA, RUSSIA, CANADA] and Hans Mayer [USA]. 
ANATOMY PRIZE: For discovering that chimpanzees can identify other chimpanzees individually from seeing photographs of their rear ends. 
Frans de Waal [The Netherlands and USA] and Jennifer Pokorny [USA]. 
MEDICINE PRIZE: For advising doctors who perform colonoscopies how to minimize the chance that their patients will explode.
Emmanuel Ben-Soussan and Michel Antonietti [FRANCE].