He took great trouble in procuring Sofia Kovalevskaya a position of full professor of mathematics in Stockholm University.

Mittag-Leffler was born in Stockholm and became the first son of the school teacher John Olof Leffler and Gustava Wilhelmina, née Mittag.

As all children recalled, Olof and Gustava held an open and hospitable house, they often were visited by mutual friends.

As an adult, Gustav claimed that a significant part of his early education he received at home by listening to their guests.

As a tribute to his maternal relatives, at the age of 20, Gustav added his mother's maiden name to his paternal surname.

Still, in recollections of August Strindberg it was "a setting straight out of Dickens novels" with severe fights between students, frequent beatings by teachers, and very strict atmosphere.

In October 1873, he arrived to Paris, where soon acquainted Darboux, Joseph Liouville, Charles Auguste Briot, Jean Claude Bouquet, and several other prominent mathematicians of the time.

In Spring 1874, he moved to Berlin and started visiting Karl Weierstrass's lectures on elliptic functions.

[8] Her father Jacob Julius af Lindfors was a major-general and led a successful business, while her mother Maria Emilia Borgström was from one of the richest merchant family in Helsingfors.

Three leading architects of that time collaborated in the project — Rudolf Arborelius, Carl Westman, and Ferdinand Boberg.

[15] After her death he put a lot of effort into preventing her scientific image from being distorted in times when her accomplishments were under constant attacks of skeptics, critics and mere detractors.

In the early 1880s, through his former teacher Charles Hermite Mittag-Leffler acquainted Paul Appell, Emile Picard, and Henri Poincaré.

Mittag-Leffler spent his honeymoon traveling through Europe persuading mathematicians to join the project, and managed to secure a constant flow of good articles.

The journal required substantial funding, it was obtained with the help of King Oscar, and partly paid for with the fortune of Mittag-Leffler's wife Signe.

Earlier, he had become associates with Henrik Palme and in time obtained several posts and positions in his insurance and financial institutions.