Ig Nobel Prizes leave the United States for the first time in 35 years, awarded in Zurich
Ten research teams were honored at a Zurich convention center on 3 September, the first time in the Ig Nobel Prizes' 35-year history that the ceremony moved outside the United States, organizers said, citing concerns that international attendees could not get visas. Among the winners: a team studying why parents find their own children's body odour more pleasant than a partner's, and why that recognition briefly reverses at puberty.
Science··Midday
Ig Nobel ceremony leaves the US for the first time in 35 years
Ten research teams were honored at a convention center in Zurich, Switzerland on 3 September, the Ig Nobel Prizes' first ceremony outside the United States in the awards' 35-year history. Organizers said the move reflected concerns that international attendees could not get visas. The awards, run by the digital magazine Annals of Improbable Research, honor unusual and imaginative scientific contributions with a trophy resembling a cross between a mushroom and a human foot, and audience members opened the show, as tradition dictates, by throwing paper airplanes toward the stage.[2]
The olfaction prize: why parents like their own child's smell
The olfaction prize went to Ilona Croy, Tomasz Frackowiak, Thomas Hummel and Agnieszka Sorokowska for research finding that parents rate their own children's body odour as more pleasant than their partner's, and that infant odour activates reward and pleasure regions of the brain in ways that support caregiving. The team also found that puberty disrupts that recognition: mothers showed an aversion to their sons' odour and fathers to their daughters', with the parental preference returning after puberty through familiarisation.[1]
Cockroach milk, buried underwear and a 2027 date in Antwerp
Other 2026 winners honored alongside Croy, Frackowiak, Hummel and Sorokowska's odour-recognition team included researchers who studied milk from cockroaches, a team that buried 1,000 pairs of underwear across more than 25 countries to study soil health, and Matilda Brindle, Stuart West and Catherine F. Talbot, who reconstructed the evolutionary history of kissing. Organizers plan to alternate future ceremonies between Zurich and other European cities; the 2027 edition is set for Antwerp, Belgium, with no immediate plans to return to the United States.[2], [1]
