The mathematical journal “Archiv der Mathematik” was founded shortly after the Second World War in 1948 by Wilhelm Süss, at that time director of Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach (MFO, Oberwolfach Research Institute for Mathematics). Since 1952, the journal is published by Birkhäuser.

The managing editors in chronological order are

  • Wilhelm Süss

  • Hellmuth Kneser

  • Reinhold Baer

  • Erich Lamprecht

  • Ernst-Ulrich Gekeler

Since 2016, Ralph Chill and Gabriele Nebe share the managing editorial duties.

From the very beginning, “Archiv der Mathematik” publishes short high quality contributions that are of broad mathematical interest: New simple ideas are preferred over the uttermost technical generality. Numerous papers that appeared in “Archiv der Mathematik” report one ingenious fundamental idea that initiated many important developments in various mathematical areas.

The editorial board selected a few of these high impact articles and invited experts to survey some of these developments in mathematics that grew out of this particular article. This collection of survey articles is augmented by a few research papers by members of the editorial board. All articles in this special issue went through the usual refereeing process.

November 2023

Ralph Chill, Gabriele Nebe, and Christine Wilk-Pitz