Late Japanese researcher wins Ig Nobel Prize for study on blowing one’s nose

The late Professor Emeritus Tokuji Unno was awarded the Ig Nobel Medicine Prize — a satirical prize awarded to promote public engagement with scientific research — on Thursday for his research on how best to blow one’s nose. Unno, who passed away in 2022 at 89, was the inaugural professor of otolaryngology — or the study of the ear, nose and throat — at Asahikawa Medical University in Hokkaido. A specialist in respiratory physiology, he won the award for work detailed in his 1977 paper, “How to Blow the Nose — An Aerodynamic Study of the Nose Blowing.”