A Kurdish refugee won the prestigious Fields Medal — considered the Nobel Prize of mathematics — but had it swiped just moments after receiving it.

Caucher Birkar put the 14-karat gold medal, worth $4,000, in his briefcase at the ceremony in crime-plagued Rio de Janeiro and noticed it was gone soon afterward.

His empty briefcase was found in a nearby pavilion outside the venue, Riocentro.

Police reviewed security tapes and have identified two suspects.

The Fields Medal recognizes great mathematical achievements of those who were under 40 at the beginning of the year. The ceremony takes place every four years and it was the first time it was held in a Latin American city.

Birkar, 40, is originally from a village within the Kurdish province of Marivan near the Iran-Iraq border, CBS News reported.

“Kurdistan was an unlikely place for a kid to develop an interest in mathematics,” he said.

Birkar studied at Tehran University and was granted political asylum and citizenship in Britain. He now teaches at Cambridge University and specializes in algebraic geometry.

“To go from the point that I didn’t imagine meeting these people to the point where someday I hold a medal myself — I just couldn’t imagine that this would come true,” Birkar told Quanta Magazine.

He said he hoped his award would “put a smile on the faces of those 40 million people” in his war-torn country.

Three others also received Fields Medals — Alessio Figalli, of Italy, Peter Scholze, of Germany, and Indian-born, Australian-raised Akshay Venkatesh.

Red-faced organizers apologized for the theft of Birkar’s medal.

“The International Congress of Mathematicians is profoundly sorry about the disappearance of the briefcase belonging to mathematician Caucher Birkar, which contained his Fields Medal from the ceremony this morning,” they said in a note.

With Post wires