Caroline Terry : A History of Model Theory and an Excursion into a Universal Metric Space

Posted by Phillip Wesolek , part of the Graduate Student Colloquium.

At

Nov. 18, 2013, 5:30 p.m.

In

SEO 636

Abstract

We introduce some questions that drove the development of early model theory, in particular questions of counting the number of models of a theory. We then discuss the answers to these questions, and some of the techniques developed to do so. In particular we consider the example of algebraically closed fields of characteristic zero, and the interpretation of some stability theoretic notions there. Finally we discuss the interpretation of some of these notions in a particular unstable theory, that of the rational Urysohn sphere, i.e. the unique universal and homogeneous countable rational metric space.