Ever since the 1970s Van Bronswijk has been publishing about research in the field of ecosystems within our houses, particularly between the bed sheets and on the mattress. She is an authority in taking stock of mites, insects, spiders, pseudo-scorpions, crustaceans, bacteria, algae, ferns and fungi in our environment. Van Bronswijk (1946) studied biology at Radboud University of Nijmegen, where she obtained her PhD in 1972 with the dissertation entitled ‘House-Dust Ecosystem’. In 1991 she was appointed professor of biological agents in the architectural environment at the TU/e.
For seventeen years now the Ig Nobel Prizes have been awarded by the scientific journal Annals of Improbable Research (Ig Nobel is a pun: it plays on the analogy of the English word ignoble with the name of Alfred Nobel). The ceremony has a frivolous approach, but every year many earlier Nobel Prize winners render assistance to it.
Usually the research conducted by the winners is of a somewhat peculiar nature, and it is precisely thanks to this that it does attract the attention of national and international media. Van Bronswijk’s research also manages to get coverage on a regular basis. For instance, some years ago she claimed that malaria could within the foreseeable future become a problem for the Netherlands, due to global warming and an increase in building activities near water gardens.
For that matter, Van Bronswijk is succeeding two Dutch scientists who were awarded last year’s Ig Nobel Prize for Biology. Then the Wageningen researchers Bart Knols and Ruurd de Jong were rewarded for their research, in which they proved that the malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae was attracted by the scent of sweaty feet and Limburg cheese. Four years ago the curator of the Natural History Museum Rotterdam received the prize for his research into homosexual necrophilia in wild ducks./.