Roland Fraïssé

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

Roland Fraïssé
Born	(1920-03-12)12 March 1920 Bressuire, France
Died	30 March 2008(2008-03-30) (aged 88) Marseille, France
Nationality	French
Alma mater	University of Paris
Known for	Ehrenfeucht–Fraïssé games, Fraïssé limit
Scientific career
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	University of Provence
Thesis	Sur quelques classifications des systèmes de relations  (1953)
Doctoral advisor	René de Possel

Life

Fraïssé received his doctoral degree from the University of Paris 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.

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