Abbreviated title (ISO 4) Acta Math. Edited by Ari Laptev | Discipline Mathematics Publication history 1882–present | |
Language English, French, German Publisher Springer Science+Business Media on behalf of Mittag-Leffler Institute | ||
Acta Mathematica is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering research in all fields of mathematics. The journal was established by Gösta Mittag-Leffler in 1882 and is published by Institut Mittag-Leffler, a research institute for mathematics belonging to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Since 2006, the journal has been printed and distributed by Springer Science+Business Media.
According to Cédric Villani, this journal is "considered by many to be the most prestigious of all mathematical research journals". Villani writes that the journal's "most famous episode" concerns Henri Poincaré, who won a prize offered in 1887 by Oscar II of Sweden for the best mathematical work concerning the stability of the Solar System by purporting to prove the stability of a special case of the three-body problem. The prize paper was to be published in Acta Mathematica, but after the issue containing the paper was printed, Poincaré found an error that invalidated his proof. He paid more than the prize money to destroy the print run and reprint the issue without his paper, and instead published a corrected paper a year later in the same journal that demonstrated that the system could be unstable. This paper later became one of the foundational works of chaos theory.