''Acta Mathematica'' is a

peer-reviewed Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work ( peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review ...

open-access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...

scientific journal In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication designed to further the progress of science by disseminating new research findings to the scientific community. These journals serve as a platform for researchers, schola ...

covering research in all fields of

mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

. According to

Cédric Villani Cédric Patrice Thierry Villani (; born 5 October 1973) is a French politician and mathematician working primarily on partial differential equations, Riemannian geometry and mathematical physics. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 2010, and he ...

, this journal is "considered by many to be the most prestigious of all mathematical research journals".. According to the ''

Journal Citation Reports ''Journal Citation Reports'' (''JCR'') is an annual publication by Clarivate. It has been integrated with the Web of Science and is accessed from the Web of Science Core Collection. It provides information about academic journals in the natur ...

'', the journal has a 2020

impact factor The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a type of journal ranking. Journals with higher impact factor values are considered more prestigious or important within their field. The Impact Factor of a journa ...

of 4.273, ranking it 5th out of 330 journals in the category "Mathematics".

Publication history

The journal was established by

Gösta Mittag-Leffler Magnus Gustaf "Gösta" Mittag-Leffler (16 March 1846 – 7 July 1927) was a Sweden, Swedish mathematician. His mathematical contributions are connected chiefly with the theory of functions that today is called complex analysis. He founded the pre ...

in 1882 and is published by Institut Mittag-Leffler, a research institute for mathematics belonging to the

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences () is one of the Swedish Royal Academies, royal academies of Sweden. Founded on 2 June 1739, it is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization that takes special responsibility for promoting nat ...

. The journal was printed and distributed by

Springer Springer or springers may refer to: Publishers * Springer Science+Business Media, aka Springer International Publishing, a worldwide publishing group founded in 1842 in Germany formerly known as Springer-Verlag. ** Springer Nature, a multinationa ...

from 2006 to 2016. Since 2017, Acta Mathematica has been published electronically and in print by International Press. Its electronic version is open access without publishing fees.

Poincaré episode

The journal's "most famous episode" (according to Villani) concerns

Henri Poincaré Jules Henri Poincaré (, ; ; 29 April 185417 July 1912) was a French mathematician, Theoretical physics, theoretical physicist, engineer, and philosophy of science, philosopher of science. He is often described as a polymath, and in mathemati ...

, who won a prize offered in 1887 by

Oscar II of Sweden Oscar II (Oscar Fredrik; 21 January 1829 – 8 December 1907) was King of Sweden from 1872 until his death in 1907 and King of Norway from 1872 to 1905. Oscar was the son of Oscar I of Sweden, King Oscar I and Josephine of Leuchtenberg, Queen J ...

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 In physics, specifically classical mechanics, the three-body problem is to take the initial positions and velocities (or momenta) of three point masses orbiting each other in space and then calculate their subsequent trajectories using Newton' ...

. This episode was rediscovered in the 1990s by Daniel Goroff, in his preface to the English translation of "Les méthodes nouvelles de la mécanique céleste" by June Barrow-Green and K.G. Andersson.. The prized or lauded 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 Chaos theory is an interdisciplinary area of Scientific method, scientific study and branch of mathematics. It focuses on underlying patterns and Deterministic system, deterministic Scientific law, laws of dynamical systems that are highly sens ...

References

Literature

External links

* {{Authority control Mathematics journals Publications established in 1882 Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Springer Science+Business Media academic journals Quarterly journals English-language journals French-language journals English-French multilingual journals German-language journals English-German multilingual journals