Just a few short weeks after the highly irreverent yet still important Ig Nobel Ceremony, the science community recognized the cream of its crop with the 2023 Nobel Prizes in the first full week of October. The dates for the official announcements are aligned with their usual order throughout the years, always announcing Physiology and Medicine first, then Physics, then Chemistry. The Nobel Committee will transition toward the Literature and Peace prizes to round out the week before Economics is announced on the following Monday. As usual, these prizes recognize a lifetime of work that has given the greatest benefit to humanity. Click the links to check out some of our picks for greatest Nobel science achievements as well a look at last year's Nobel winners, but here we go for this year's running tally of scientific legend.

I always look forward to this time of year, even more so sometimes than the actual Nobel Prizes, because I want to see what new insights can be derived from the weird science that, as they say, first makes you laugh, then think. That's right, now we are at the 33rd First Annual Ig Nobel Prizes! Just like last year and the few years before, the Ig Nobel ceremony was conducted virtually while the pandemic is still not quelled to an extent that allowed the organizers (men and women of science, see?) to be comfortable enough to have hundreds of people packed into a raucous arena, so the paper airplane tosses and everything else was pre-taped and released online. This did not take away from the absurdity and the few laugh-out-loud moments that I (and probably hundreds of thousands of science enthusiasts tuning in from around the globe) had during the 90-minute event. I do wonder if some of these might supplant my personal top ten, but maybe not just yet. Now let's see what happened!

As we try to come back to some level of normalcy after a couple of long, stressful years of pandemic, science has been continuing to chug along to improve the human condition. In celebration of this, we had silly achievements that made us laugh, then think, in the form of the Ig Nobel prizes, and this week, the cream of the crop was recognized with the three science Nobel Prizes. We wanted to highlight the Physiology and Medicine prize separately since ABclonal is a bioscience reagents company, but as we said before, every field of science is important to the pursuit of not just biological advancement, but the betterment of all humanity. So while you can also read about the achievements of the Medicine winner, Dr. Svante Pääbo, in the previous entry, here are the science prize winners in all the glory we can give them in this blog space!

I had anticipated that 2022's Nobel Prize might go to something more contemporary, like the RNA-based vaccine technology or even the malaria vaccine, but as is sometimes the case with the Nobel committee, this year they threw us a pleasantly surprising curveball with the prize in Physiology or Medicine. With this award, the Nobel Prize definitely awards someone who gave the greatest benefit to humankind indeed as the recognition was for discoveries that look into the very origins of humanity!

Every fall, the world comes to attention for the unveiling of the Nobel Prizes, considered the most prestigious awards for achievements in science and the humanities. Per Alfred Nobel’s will, the original five prizes were to be awarded “for the greatest benefit to humankind,” and in 1969, the Economics prize was added to the mix.

That time of year that we've all been anticipating is here! That's right, the 32nd First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony took place on the evening of Thursday, September 15, and the 2022 winners took their bows and hammed it up in one of the most favorite of scientific gatherings. Alas, the ceremony was online-only due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but that did not take away from the fun and love of science that is expected from this festival of glee that features actual Nobel Prize winners! Without further ado, please read on for the many great, uh, achievements by this year's newest additions to the Ig Nobel ranks.