Marc Abrahams: Making science funny

In this edition of Titans of Science, Chris Smith chats with co-founder of Annals of Improbable Research, and the master of ceremonies for the Ig Nobel prize, Marc Abrahams…

Chris - Marc Abrahams was born on the 17th of January, 1956. He attended Swampscott High School and then read Applied Mathematics at Harvard. So what was the early day science? People are notorious in your position for blowing things up or kitchen table chemistry, that kind of thing. Were you one of those?

Marc - I never fell in love with blowing things up. Never had anything against it, but never really did a whole lot myself. And in school, I had a few teachers who were both really good teachers and really loved science. And one of them was also very, very funny. And she would play records of songs by a guy named Tom Lehrer. He was a mathematician who wrote and performed funny songs. And some of them were about science, some of them were about politics. They were about all kinds of things, and they were also kind of grimly funny, sharply grimly funny in a lot of ways. And growing up around that I think just encouraged whatever was within me.

Chris - Well, it's clearly served you well because you are now the editor and co-founder of Annals of Improbable Research. You're also the originator and the master of ceremonies of the annual Ig Nobel Prize celebration. That's how you and I first got to know each other. I mean, it had been going for a while before I got involved for the first time, but I've just been a huge fan ever since. And for those not in the know, and Marc would tell us more later, it's a satirical take on the Nobel Prize, isn't it, Marc? But that gala is broadcast on public radio every single year and throughout your career. Your motto has been 'laugh, then think'. It's making people think about things, having made them laugh first. It's something we've shamelessly stolen here on the Naked Scientists, I hasten to add. You started the Ig Nobels in 1991. I was 16. I was doing my GCSEs at the time, so I was about to go down the scientific career track, but that was unusual for that period. People weren't communicating science very much at all at that period in the 1990s. It was in a bit of a low point, wasn't it? And so for you to come out the blocks and do something that was both funny, but also shone the spotlight on important bits of science that did make people think, but then engage with the subject, that was very forward thinking,

Marc - You can look at it that way. That's kind of the way I grew up. And looking back, that's the way my favourite teacher and, and also my father and just people I liked were about, especially with science. The things that I really liked about science as a kid, and then later in college studying it sort of for real. And later doing it, sort of for real, the things that I always liked the best were when there was something that I didn't understand. I felt really stupid. I don't understand what this thing is. And then somebody would describe it in a different way or I would come at it from a different direction. And very suddenly there was something that was kind of crazy about it and funny and I understood it. And part of what made it funny was I didn't understand this a minute ago, and now it's really simple. I was looking at it like it was some horribly complicated thing, and it's so simple. And so these surprises were things that I came to crave and I still do. And I hope that lots of other people do too. That when you're learning anything, a lot of the time, I think for pretty much anybody, a lot of the times when you suddenly make sense of something. It's at a moment when you just see it in a different way or you see something that seems completely crazy and it makes you laugh and you relax and suddenly you're seeing the thing in a much clearer way, you understand it. So that's what the Ig Nobels are really about. I mean, it started in 1991 was the first ceremony. I just sort of by accident become the editor of a science magazine. Before that, I was doing software stuff on various kinds of things.