As the editor of a science magazine--a fanny one--I was continually besieged by people who wanted ray help in winning a Nobel Prize. I always explained that I had no influence on these matters, but they invariably told me in great detail what they’d done and why they deserved a prize. In some cases, they were correct. They deserved a prize all right, but not a Nobel Prize. And so, with the help of some friends and colleagues, I started the annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony. The first was held in October 1991. Now each year the science humor magazine I currently edit, Annals of Improbable Research, awards ten Ig Nobel Prizes to people whose achievements, though not precisely ignoble, "cannot or should not be reproduced." Genuine Nobel Prize winners present the Ig Nobel Prizes to the winners at Harvard. A friendly, standing-room-only audience of 1,200 gives a warm welcome with wild applause and paper airplanes. Here are a few especially memorable Ig Nobel Prize winners: In Computer Science Chris Niswander of Tucson, Ariz., was honored in 2002 for inventing PawSense, software that detects when a cat is walking across your computer keyboard. "Cats can enter random commands and data, damage your files and even crash your computer," explained Niswander, a computer scientist. When PawSense detects a cat on the keyboard, it emits a blast of loud harmonica music, or a recording of someone hissing. The inventor says that in addition to the sounds, once a cat has been recognized, PawSense blacks the cat’s keyboard input. It puts up a giant message on the computer screen: "Catlike typing Detected." To unlock the screen, the program requests that you type the word human. A cat might beat the system through a lucky combination of paw blows, but its odds of doing so are low. In Environmental protection When businessmen come home to their wives after a hard night of drinking and smoking for professional purposes, they can, though no fault of their own, smell bad. Hyuk-ho Kwon of Kolon Company in Seoul, South Korea, was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize in 2003 for inventing the self-perfuming business suit. The fabric is soaked in micro-encapsulated peppermint scent; even a slight motion releases the flagrance. Kwon traveled from Seoul at his company’s expense to attend the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. The KolonCompany generously made serf-perfuming business suits for the five Nobel laureates who participated in the event, as well as for the master of ceremonies.