October 1, 1999
Mild chile peppers bring fame to N.M. biologist
(Staff and wire reports)
A New Mexico biologist has achieved a dubious sort of fame.
Paul Bosland of the New Mexico State University
Chile Pepper Institute in Las
Cruces has been granted the "Ig Nobel" prize in biology
for his work in breeding
the spiceless jalapeno. The Ig Nobel is a
Harvard University annual spoof of
the Nobel prizes, intended to recognize achievements
that "cannot or should not
be reproduced."
Bosland, according to an Associated Press
report, is gone until Monday and
could not be reached for comment.
Other nearby Ig Nobel winners were the Kansas
and Colorado boards of
education, who received the Ig Nobel in Science 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."