''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 revie ...

open-access

scientific journal In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research. Content Articles in scientific journals are mostly written by active scientists such ...

covering research in all fields of

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

. According to Cédric Villani, 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 publicationby Clarivate Analytics (previously the intellectual property of Thomson Reuters). It has been integrated with the Web of Science and is accessed from the Web of Science-Core Colle ...

'', the journal has a 2020

impact factor The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years in a given journal, as ...

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

Publication history

The journal was established by Gösta Mittag-Leffler in 1882 and is published by

Institut Mittag-Leffler The Mittag-Leffler Institute is a mathematical research institute located in Djursholm, a suburb of Stockholm. It invites scholars to participate in half-year programs in specialized mathematical subjects. The Institute is run by the Royal Swedi ...

, a research institute for mathematics belonging to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The journal was printed and distributed by Springer 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 ( S: stress final syllable ; 29 April 1854 – 17 July 1912) was a French mathematician, theoretical physicist, engineer, and philosopher of science. He is often described as a polymath, and in mathematics as "Th ...

, 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 King Oscar I and Queen Josephine. He inherited the Swedish and Norwe ...

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. 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 study and branch of mathematics focused on underlying patterns and deterministic laws of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions, and were once thought to hav ...

References

External links

* {{Authority control Mathematics journals Publications established in 1882 Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Multilingual journals Springer Science+Business Media academic journals Quarterly journals