Roland Fraïssé (ʁɔˈlɑ̃ fʁajˈse) was a French

French people

The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...

 mathematical logic

Mathematical logic

Mathematical logic is a subfield of mathematics with close connections to foundations of mathematics, theoretical computer science and philosophical logic. The field includes both the mathematical study of logic and the applications of formal logic to other areas of mathematics...

ian. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Paris

University of Paris

The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...

 in 1953. In his thesis, Fraïssé used the back-and-forth method to determine whether two model-theoretic

Model theory

In mathematics, model theory is the study of mathematical structures using tools from mathematical logic....

 structures

Structure (mathematical logic)

In universal algebra and in model theory, a structure consists of a set along with a collection of finitary operations and relations which are defined on it....

 were elementarily equivalent. This method of determining elementary equivalence was later formulated as the Ehrenfeucht–Fraïssé game

Ehrenfeucht–Fraïssé game

In the mathematical discipline of model theory, the Ehrenfeucht–Fraïssé game is a technique for determining whether two structures...

. Fraïssé worked primarily in relation theory

Theory of relations

The theory of relations treats the subject matter of relations in its combinatorial aspect, as distinguished from, though related to, its more properly logical study on one side and its more generally mathematical study on another....

. Another of his important works was the Fraïssé construction

Age (model theory)

In model theory, the age of a structure A is the class of all finitely generated structures which are embeddable in A . This concept is central in the construction of a Fraïssé limit....

 of a Fraïssé limit of finite structures. He also introduced the notion of compensor in the theory of posets

Partially ordered set

In mathematics, especially order theory, a partially ordered set formalizes and generalizes the intuitive concept of an ordering, sequencing, or arrangement of the elements of a set. A poset consists of a set together with a binary relation that indicates that, for certain pairs of elements in the...

.

Most of his career was spent as Professor at the University of Provence

University of Provence

The University of Provence Aix-Marseille I is a public university mostly located in Aix-en-Provence and Marseille. It is one of the three Universities of Aix-Marseille and is part of the Academy of Aix and Marseille.-Overview:...

 in Marseille, 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.

External links