Roland Fraïssé

Who was Roland Fraïssé?

Roland Fraïssé was a French mathematical logician. He 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 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.