The American Finance Association is pleased to announce that Professor Jay Ritter has been named the 2026 Fellow of the American Finance Association, one of the Association’s highest honors recognizing individuals who have made distinguished and lasting contributions to the field of finance. Professor Ritter earned his bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD degrees from the University of Chicago and, until transitioning to emeritus status in 2024, served as the Joseph B. Cordell Eminent Scholar at the University of Florida; he now directs the IPO Initiative at the University’s Warrington College of Business. With more than 61,000 citations, his research has profoundly influenced both academic scholarship and practice, spanning topics such as capital formation, IPO underpricing and long-run performance, investment banking, capital structure, behavioral finance, and market anomalies. Widely known as “Mr. IPO,” Professor Ritter is also recognized for his exceptional service to the profession, including the creation and ongoing maintenance of a publicly accessible IPO data resource that has supported countless academic studies, dissertations, policy analyses, and media reports, as well as his mentorship of generations of students and scholars worldwide.