Roland Fraïssé (French: [ʁɔlɑ̃ fʁajse]; 12 March 1920 – 30 March 2008[1]) was a French mathematical logician.

Roland Fraïssé
Born(1920-03-12)12 March 1920
Bressuire, France
Died30 March 2008(2008-03-30) (aged 88)
Marseille, France
NationalityFrench
Alma materUniversity of Paris
Known forEhrenfeucht–Fraïssé games, Fraïssé limit
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
InstitutionsUniversity of Provence
Thesis Sur quelques classifications des systèmes de relations  (1953)
Doctoral advisorRené de Possel

Life

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Fraïssé received his doctoral degree from the University of Paris in 1953. In his thesis,[2][3] 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.[4]

Most of his career was spent as Professor at the University of Provence in Marseille, France.

Selected publications

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  • 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

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  1. ^ Rogics08 – Décès de Roland Fraïssé – Message de Maurice Pouzet et Gérard Lopez, retrieved 22 May 2008.
  2. ^ Sur une nouvelle classification des systèmes de relations, Roland Fraïssé, Comptes Rendus 230 (1950), 1022–1024.
  3. ^ Sur quelques classifications des systèmes de relations, Roland Fraïssé, thesis, Paris, 1953; published in Publications Scientifiques de l'Université d'Alger, series A 1 (1954), 35–182.
  4. ^ 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