List of Ig Nobel Prize Winners - 1999

1999

• Biology – Presented to Dr. Paul Bosland, director of The Chile Pepper Institute, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico, for breeding a spiceless jalapeño chili pepper.
• Chemistry – Presented to Takeshi Makino, president of The Safety Detective Agency in Osaka, Japan, for his involvement with S-Check, an infidelity detection spray that wives can apply to their husbands' underwear.
• Environmental Protection – Presented to Hyuk-ho Kwon of Kolon Company of Seoul, South Korea, for inventing the self-perfuming business suit.
• Literature – Presented to the British Standards Institution for its six-page specification (BS 6008) of the proper way to make a cup of tea.
• Managed Health Care – Presented to George Blonsky and Charlotte Blonsky of New York City and San Jose, California, for inventing a device (U.S. Patent 3,216,423) to aid women in giving birth: the woman is strapped onto a circular table, and the table is then rotated at high speed.
• Medicine – Presented to Dr. Arvid Vatle of Stord, Norway, for carefully collecting, classifying, and contemplating which kinds of containers his patients chose when submitting urine samples.
• Peace – Presented to Charl Fourie and Michelle Wong of Johannesburg, South Africa, for inventing the Blaster, a foot-pedal activated flamethrower that motorists can use against carjackers.
• Physics – Presented to Dr. Len Fisher of Bath, England and Sydney, Australia for calculating the optimal way to dunk a biscuit. Also, to Professor Jean-Marc Vanden-Broeck of the University of East Anglia, England, and Belgium, and Joseph Keller of USA for calculating how to make a teapot spout that does not drip.
• Science Education – Presented to the Kansas State Board of Education and the Colorado State Board of 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.
• Sociology – Presented to Steve Penfold, of York University in Toronto, for doing his Ph.D. thesis on the history of Canadian doughnut shops.