Congratulations to Ken for winning the the Steele prize.
I first met Ken on the Hearst mining circle. It was September of 1997, during the time I was applying for graduate schools. I was visiting Danny on the way to Bonn, and it was the one US university I visited. Coincidentally, to within a few months, Ken was the same age then as I am now. That’s actually somewhat reassuring, since it seems like a lifetime ago and Ken still seems pretty sprightly today.
Continuing with this theme, I guess 1976 in today’s currency would be 2003. For another perspective, 1976 is about half way between now and the end of class field theory (the Artin reciprocity law). Ribet’s argument (already quite short) can be made even shorter once one proves the theorem that Galois representations associated to ordinary modular forms are ordinary (and crystalline) as representations of the Galois group of \(\mathbf{Q}_p\). But this is the Lemma that launched a thousand theorems in Iwasawa theory. Or, to double down on my chiliad metaphors, a Lemma is worth a thousand theorems. A well-deserved award!