Carl Johan Malmsten

Carl Johan Malmsten (1814 to 1886) was a Swedish mathematician and politician, born in Uddetorp in Skara County. He became docent in 1840, professor of mathematics at Uppsala University in 1842, and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1844. He is notable for early research into the theory of functions of a complex variable, for evaluating several important logarithmic integrals and series, for studying series and integrals related to the zeta function, and for helping Mittag-Leffler start the journal Acta Mathematica. His 1842 evaluations of logarithmic integrals were later rediscovered by other researchers, and the best known of them is often called Vardi's integral; Iaroslav Blagouchine has argued that Malmsten's name would be more appropriate. His series for the logarithm of the Gamma function was derived five years before Kummer, yet is known as Kummer's series. Outside mathematics he served as a minister without portfolio from 1859 to 1866 and as Governor of Skaraborg County from 1866 to 1879.