The New International Encyclopædia/Mittag-Leffler, Magnus Gösta, Baron von

MITTAG-LEEFLER, mĭt'tȧg-lĕf'lẽr,, Baron von (1846&mdash;). A Swedish mathematician, born at Stockholm. He studied mathematics at Upsala and later under Weierstrass at Berlin. He began his teaching as tutor at Upsala in 1872, and five years later became professor of mathematics at Helsingfors. In 1881 he was made professor of mathematics at the University of Stockholm, and subsequently was several times its rector. He was made a member of the Academy of Sciences of Sweden in 1883. His mathematical contributions are connected chiefly with the theory of functions. In 1882, under the patronage of King Oscar, he founded the Acta Mathematica, at present one of the leading mathematical journals of the world. The historical part of this journal has since 1887 been published separately by Eneström as the Bibliotheca Mathematica. It was Mittag-Leffler's appreciation of Sonya Kovalevsky's (q.v.) work that took her to Stockholm.