2004 Nobel Prize Announcements <Prev Next>

The 2004 Nobel Prizes in Economics, Peace, Literature, Chemistry, Physics, and Physiology or Medicine as well as the Ig-Nobel Prizes have been announced! While you're here, why not read about past winners.

N.B. The time of the announcement is given in Stockholm time (Central European Time); subtract 6 hours to get the US Eastern Daylight Time).

Date: Monday, October 11, 2004 (13:00 CEST at the earliest) Prize: ECONOMICS Awarding institution: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences And the winners are... Finn E. Kydland and Edward C. Prescott "for their contributions to dynamic macroeconomics: the time consistency of economic policy and the driving forces behind business cycles". Date: Friday, October 8, 2004 (11:00 a.m. CEST) Prize: PEACE Awarding institution: The Norwegian Nobel Institute And the winner is... Wangari Maathai "for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace" Date: Thursday, October 7, 2004 (13:00 p.m CEST. at the earliest) Prize: LITERATURE Awarding institution: The Swedish Academy And the winner is... Elfriede Jelinek "for her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society's clich s and their subjugating power" Date: Wednesday, October 6, 2004 (11:45 a.m. CEST at the earliest) Prize: CHEMISTRY Awarding institution: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences And the winners are... Aaron Ciechanover, Avram Hershko, and Irwin Rose "for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation" Date: Tuesday, October 5, 2004 (11:45 a.m. CEST at the earliest) Prize: PHYSICS Awarding institution: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences And the winners are... David J. Gross, H. David Politzer, and Frank Wilczek "for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction " Date: Monday, October 4, 2004 (11:30 a.m. CEST at the earliest) Prize: PHYSIOLOGY or MEDICINE Awarding institution: The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute And the winners are... Richard Axel and Linda B. Buck "for their discoveries of odorant receptors and the organization of the olfactory system" Date: Thursday, September 30, 2004 (7:30 pm EDT) Prize: IG NOBEL PRIZES Awarding institution: The Annals of Improbable Research And the winners are: MEDICINE Steven Stack of Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA and James Gundlach of Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama, USA, for their published report "The Effect of Country Music on Suicide." PUBLISHED IN: Social Forces, vol. 71, no. 1, September 1992, pp. 211-8. WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: James Gundlach. PHYSICS Ramesh Balasubramaniam of the University of Ottowa, and Michael Turvey of the University of Connecticut and Yale University, for exploring and explaining the dynamics of hula-hooping. REFERENCE: "Coordination Modes in the Multisegmental Dynamics of Hula Hooping," Ramesh Balasubramaniam and Michael T. Turvey, Biological Cybernetics, vol. 90, no. 3, March 2004, pp. 176-90. WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: Ramesh Balasubramaniam and Michael Turvey. PUBLIC HEALTH Jillian Clarke of the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences, and then Howard University, 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. WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: Jillian Clarke CHEMISTRY The Coca-Cola Company of Great Britain, for using advanced technology to convert liquid from the River Thames into Dasani, a transparent form of water, which for precautionary reasons has been made unavailable to consumers. ENGINEERING Donald J. Smith and his father, the late Frank J. Smith, of Orlando Florida, USA, for patenting the combover (U.S. Patent #4,022,227). WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: Donald Smith's son, Scott Jackson Smith, and daughter, Heather Smith. LITERATURE The American Nudist Research Library of Kissimmee, Florida, USA, for preserving nudist history so that everyone can see it. WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: Pamela Chestek, the daughter of ANRL director Helen Fisher. PSYCHOLOGY Daniel Simons of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Christopher Chabris of Harvard University, for demonstrating that when people pay close attention to something, it's all too easy to overlook anything else -- even a man in a gorilla suit. REFERENCE: "Gorillas in Our Midst," Daniel J. Simons and Christopher F. Chabris, vol. 28, Perception, 1999, pages 1059-74. DEMO: http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/media/ig.html WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris. ECONOMICS The Vatican, for outsourcing prayers to India. PEACE Daisuke Inoue of Hyogo, Japan, for inventing karaoke, thereby providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: Daisuke Inoue. BIOLOGY 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, for showing that herrings apparently communicate by farting. REFERENCE: "Sounds Produced by Herring (Clupea harengus) Bubble Release," Magnus Wahlberg and Hakan Westerberg, Aquatic Living Resources, vol. 16, 2003, pp. 271-5. REFERENCE: "Pacific and Atlantic Herring Produce Burst Pulse Sounds," Ben Wilson, Robert S. Batty and Lawrence M. Dill, Biology Letters, vol. 271, 2003, pp. S95-S97. WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: Lawrence Dill, Robert Batty, Magnus Whalberg, Hakan Westerberg.