All but one of the Ravenel conjectures were proved by Ethan Devinatz, Michael J. Hopkins and Jeff Smith not long after the article got published. Frank Adams said on that occasion: In further work, Ravenel calculates the Morava K-theories of several spaces and proves important theorems in chromatic homotopy theory together with Hopkins. He was also one of the founders of elliptic cohomology. In 2009, he solved together with Michael Hill and Michael Hopkins the Kervaire invariant 1 problem for large dimensions. Ravenel has written two books, the first on the calculation of the stable homotopy groups of spheres and the second on the Ravenel conjectures, colloquially known among topologists respectively as the green and orange books (though the former is no longer green, but burgundy, in its current edition). Selected work Complex cobordism and the stable homotopy groups of spheres, Academic Press 1986, 2nd edition, AMS 2003, online: Nilpotency and periodicity in stable homotopy theory, Princeton, Annals of Mathematical Studies 1992 External links at the University of Rochester References 1947 births 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Living people Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Topologists Brandeis University alumni University of Rochester faculty Columbia University faculty University of Washington faculty Sloan Research Fellows Institute for Advanced Study people Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science faculty