Claim: Richard Earl Block, who attended the University of Chicago, became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society and was the first to discover the central extension of the Witt algebra.
Evidence: Block earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1956 under the supervision of Abraham Adrian Albert. In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. He was the first to discover the central extension of the Witt algebra that gives the Virasoro algebra, though his discovery went unnoticed for many years.