The list of names of the Editorial Board of “Journal of Number Theory,” the most reputable journal, which is publishing articles on the theory of numbers, which includes professors from Princeton University, Stanford, Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn etc. recently is also including one name that ends with “ic.” Professor of the Faculty of Economics in Sarajevo Lejla Smajlovic became a part of the team which is including some of the best scientists in the field of mathematics.
“Journal of Number Theory” is a specialized journal that is publishing articles on the theory of numbers, and it is issued by renowned Dutch publisher Elsevier, which is publishing 350,000 scientific articles within 2000 journals per year.
Editorial board is not meeting, decisions are made by electronic voting and it is currently including 28 names, three of which are women, including the professor from Sarajevo University. Smajlovic is the only scientist from the region of Eastern Europe and the Balkans, which has the honor to be part of this team. Changes in the editorial board are not common or frequent, and some of Lejla’s colleagues are there for 10 or 15 years.
This dedicated professor, who was born 41 years ago in Sarajevo, started to work with the theory of numbers by accident. After university, she had no particular preference in choosing the field of mathematics that she will be engaged to, until she received materials from the World Congress of Mathematicians.
“In fact, I was searching for the problems that are closest to me and I really loved Waring’s problem. There are some beautiful circular methods that were upgraded and these are modern techniques that can be applied in different areas and there was a presentation about it. I decided that I want to do that, although I did not have a special predispositions for it,” said Smajlovic.
The publication of papers in prestigious international journals in mathematics opened a lot of doors for Lejla and now she has wider research network every year.
“More and more people are asking me to work together. So now I am working with professors from America, Finland, Germany etc. Recently I wrote a paper with a colleague from Tunisia, with whom I did not even speak via ‘Skype’, because he does not speak English very well, but we understand each other on the mathematical level, although I do not know how does he even look like,” said Smajlovic.
Her intention is to show to students that if they were born and educated in Sarajevo, that is not a disadvantage.
“Wherever you were born, whatever you do, whatever you are dealing with, if you invest a lot of effort, energy and good will, you can succeed and be internationally recognized no matter where you are and what your name is,” said Lejla.
(Source: klix.ba/ photo AA)
