Roland Fraïssé (; 12 March 1920 – 30 March 2008) was a French

mathematical logic Mathematical logic is the study of Logic#Formal logic, formal logic within mathematics. Major subareas include model theory, proof theory, set theory, and recursion theory (also known as computability theory). Research in mathematical logic com ...

ian.

Life

Fraïssé received his doctoral degree from the

University of Paris The University of Paris (), known Metonymy, metonymically as the Sorbonne (), was the leading university in Paris, France, from 1150 to 1970, except for 1793–1806 during the French Revolution. Emerging around 1150 as a corporation associated wit ...

in 1953. In his thesis, Fraïssé used the back-and-forth method to determine whether two model-theoretic structures were elementarily equivalent. This method of determining elementary equivalence was later formulated as the Ehrenfeucht–Fraïssé game. Fraïssé worked primarily in relation theory. Another of his important works was the Fraïssé construction of a Fraïssé limit of finite structures. He also formulated Fraïssé's conjecture on order embeddings, and introduced the notion of compensor in the theory of posets.Petits posets : dénombrement, représentabilité par cercles et compenseurs, Roland Fraïssé and Nik Lygeros, ''Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences'', Série I 313 (1991), no. 7, 417–420 Most of his career was spent as Professor at the

University of Provence The University of Provence Aix-Marseille I () was a Public university, public research university mostly located in Aix-en-Provence and Marseille. It was one of the three University of Aix-Marseille, Universities of Aix-Marseille and was part of t ...

Marseille Marseille (; ; see #Name, below) is a city in southern France, the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Departments of France, department of Bouches-du-Rhône and of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Regions of France, region. Situated in the ...

, France.

Selected publications

* ''Sur quelques classifications des systèmes de relations'', thesis, University of Paris, 1953; published in ''Publications Scientifiques de l'Université d'Alger'', series A 1 (1954), 35–182. * ''Cours de logique mathématique'', Paris: Gauthier-Villars Éditeur, 1967; second edition, 3 vols., 1971–1975; tr. into English and ed. by David Louvish as ''Course of Mathematical Logic'', 2 vols., Dordrecht: Reidel, 1973–1974. * ''Theory of relations'', tr. into English by P. Clote, Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1986; rev. ed. 2000.

References

French logicians Model theorists Academic staff of the University of Provence 20th-century French mathematicians 21st-century French mathematicians 1920 births 2008 deaths Mathematical logicians French male non-fiction writers 20th-century French philosophers 20th-century French male writers University of Paris alumni {{France-mathematician-stub