Then there are the other awards — the Ig Nobel prizes, which were devised to highlight research that makes people laugh, then think. Celebrating sillinessThe Ig Nobels were founded in 1991 by Marc Abrahams, editor of satirical magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Abrahams says that Robert May, the chief scientific adviser to the UK Government from 1995 to 2000, once wrote him an angry letter demanding that they stopped giving Ig Nobel prizes to British scientists. “When we first got the phone call about winning an Ig Nobel, we honestly thought it was a prank. “We were all absolutely chuffed when we got the news that we had won an Ig Nobel award.