Kenneth Alan Ribet

Kenneth A. Ribet at the summer school on the Serre conjecture at the CIRM in Luminy , July 19, 2007

Kenneth A. Ribet (born June 28, 1948 in New York City ) is an American mathematician . He mainly deals with topics of algebraic number theory , as well as algebraic geometry and automorphic forms .

He studied at Brown University , where he received his bachelor's and master's degrees , and Harvard University , where he received his PhD in 1973 with John T. Tate . In 1975 he became a Sloan Research Fellow . Since 1978 he teaches and researches at the University of University of California, Berkeley . In 1997 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2000 to the National Academy of Sciences . In 1998 he received an honorary doctorate from Brown University. He is a fellow of the American Mathematical Society .

Ribet is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Institute for Pure & Applied Mathematics at the University of California and is co-editor of various mathematical textbook series and scientific magazines such as B.  Mathematische Annalen, Annales de l'Institut Fourier, Journal of Number Theory and Mathematics Research Letters.

Ribet made a decisive contribution to the proof of Fermat's great theorem by proving a conjecture by the German mathematician Gerhard Frey that a counterexample for the Fermat conjecture implies that a certain elliptic curve cannot be modular . After that it was enough to show that the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture is true, which Andrew Wiles succeeded in doing in the decisive cases in 1995.

In 1989 he received the Fermat Prize . In 1983 he was invited to speak at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Warsaw ( Congruence relations between modular forms ). For 2017 he was awarded the Brouwer Medal . In 2018 he was on the Fields Medal Award Committee .

literature

• Kenneth A. Ribet: On modular representations of arising from modular forms ${\displaystyle \mathrm {Gal} ({\bar {\mathbb {Q} }}/\mathbb {Q} )}$ (PDF; 5.0 MB) . In: Inventiones Mathematicae . Volume 100, 1990, pp. 431-476.
• Kenneth A. Ribet: Galois Representations and Modular Forms . In: Bulletin of the AMS . tape 32 , no. 4/1995 , 1995, pp. 375-402 , arxiv : math / 9503219 .

Web links

• Homepage of Kenneth A. Ribet (English)
• Ken Ribet in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Calvin C. Moore: Mathematics at Berkeley. A history. Peters, Wellesley MA 2007, ISBN 978-1-56881-302-8 .
2. ↑ Kenneth Alan Ribet in the Mathematics Genealogy Project (English)