Some of the world's top scientists and glitterati will convene at Harvard on Thursday, Oct. 9, at 7:30 p.m. for the Seventh First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony.

A good-natured spoof of science and the Nobel Prizes, the ceremony honors people whose achievements "cannot or should not be reproduced." The event is produced by The Annals of Improbable Research (which has been described as "the MAD magazine of science") and cosponsored by the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association and the Harvard Computer Society. The ceremony will take place at Sanders Theatre. Tickets are $10, general admission; $8, students; and are available from the Sanders Theatre box office (496-2222).

Ten Ig Nobel Prizes will be awarded in fields ranging from physics, biology, and medicine to literature, economics, and peace. The Prizes will be handed out by genuine Nobel Laureates, including Sheldon Glashow (Physics '79), Dudley Herschbach (Chemistry '86), William Lipscomb (Chemistry '76), Richard Roberts (Medicine '73), and others. One laureate will be given away in the Win-a-Date-with-a-Nobel-Laureate Contest.

The theme of this year's festivities is "The Big Bang." In addition to the presentation of the 10 Ig Nobel Prizes, the ceremony will include:

* The world premiere of a mini-opera ("Il Kaboom Grosso") starring sopranos and baritones as galaxies and the Nobel Laureates as subatomic particles;

* An auction of plaster casts of the left feet of several Nobel Laureates and of scientist/supermodel Symmetra. Prior to being auctioned off at the Ig ceremony, the plaster left feet of Nobel Laureates William Lipscomb and Walter Gilbert (Medicine, 1981) and five plaster toes of scientist/supermodel Symmetra will be on public display at the Sackler Museum. The plaster foot of Nobellian Dudley Herschbach is on exhibit at the M.I.T. Press Bookstore in Kendall Square;

* Thirty-second Heisenberg Certainty Lectures (the time limit is strictly enforced by a referee);

* A special pre-game mini-concert by jazz harpist Deborah Henson-Conant and Nobel Laureate Lipscomb;

* A madcap audience of academics, musicians, Morris dancers, thespians, traffic cops, doctors, lawyers, and children clothed in academic gowns, uniforms, and obsolete technology.

The Ceremony will be telecast live, worldwide, on the Internet (for details, see the Annals' home page at http://www.improb.com).

The ceremony will be recorded for later broadcast (the day after Thanksgiving) on National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation/ScienceFriday program. Every year, the Ig (as it is affectionately known) receives extensive press coverage locally, nationally, and internationally from newspapers, magazines, radio, and TV.

Some Ig Nobel achievements are whimsical and wonderful, others perhaps less so. Past winners include Robert Lopez, who experimentally placed cat ear mites into his own ear (Entomology Prize '94); perfumier Bijan Pakzad, the creator of DNA Cologne (Chemistry Prize '95); and former Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates (Peace Prize '92).

Last year's winners included George Goble (Chemistry Prize), the first man to use liquid oxygen in a backyard barbecue; Harold Moi, the doctor who treated the case of "Transmission of Gonorrhea Through an Inflatable Doll" (Public Health Prize); and plastic pink flamingo creator Don Featherstone (Art Prize).

The ceremony will also celebrate the publication of a new book, The Best of Annals of Improbable Research (W.H. Freeman Publishers). The book includes, among many other things, details of previous Ig Nobel Prize winners and ceremonies.

On the day following the ceremony, several Ig winners past and present will inaugurate a new part of the Ig tradition: the Ig Lectures. These will be a series of 20-minute humorous talks delivered to an audience of Harvard students and faculty. The Ig Informal Lectures will be held Friday, Oct. 10, at 1:15 p.m. in Science Center Lecture Hall C. Admission is free.

For more details about the ceremony, send e-mail to: INFO@IMPROB.COM and/or see http://www.improb.com.