The purpose of this paper is to prove that the stable homotopy category of algebraic topology is ‘rigid’ in the sense that it admits essentially only one model: Rigidity Theorem. Let C be a stable model category. If the homotopy category of C and the homotopy category of spectra are equivalent as triangulated categories, then there exists a Quillen equivalence between C and the model category of spectra. Our reference model is the category of spectra in the sense of Bousfield and Friedlander [BF, §2] with the stable model structure. The point of the rigidity theorem is that its.