Mathematician Ken Ribet is well known for a 1990 paper that paved the way, five years later, for a historic proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem, one of the most famous unsolved mathematical problems of modern times.
But an oft-cited paper he wrote earlier in his career, in 1976, is dearer to his heart and has now earned him a coveted career award from the American Mathematical Society (AMS): the 2025 Leroy P. Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research.
The prize, which was announced Dec. 12, is awarded annually for a paper that has proved to be of fundamental or lasting importance in its field or a model of important research.
The award came out of the blue, said Ribet, a Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley. While the 1976 paper had earned him accolades, including an invitation to join the UC Berkeley math department in 1977, he’d long since moved on.
“It was kind of like I found some dusty bitcoin in the back of my desk and someone said, ‘Well, that’s worth $100,000,'” he said. “I had no idea.”