Nobels & IgNobels 2006

October 11, 2006 on 4:30 pm | In Science News & Hot Topics |

The 2006 Nobel Prize recipients include
Medicine: Andrew z. Fire and Craig C. Mello for discovering a mechanism for controlling the flow of genetic information
Physics: John C. Mather and George F. Smoot for their discoveries supporting the Big Bang Theory
and
Chemistry: Roger D. Kornberg for resolving the machinery that gives voice to DNA

2006 IgNobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative, and spur people’s interest in science, medicine, and technology. 2006 awards include Ornithology: Ivan R. Schwab, of the University of California Davis, and the late Philip R.A. May of the University of California Los Angeles, for exploring and explaining why woodpeckers don’t get headaches and Physics: Basile Audoly and Sebastien Neukirch of the Universit� Pierre et Marie Curie, in Paris, for their insights into why, when you bend dry spaghetti, it often breaks into more than two pieces.