Logic List Mailing Archive

Frank R. Drake

Dr. Frank R. Drake
Set Theorist and First BLC Secretary.

With great sadness, I have to report that Frank Drake passed away, at home 
in Leeds, on Sunday 16th May.  His wife Verna and daughter Anne were with 
him.

Frank was a lifelong mainstay of the Leeds Logic Group. After national 
service and a Ph.D. in modal logic under Timothy Smiley at Cambridge, he 
was one of the early 1960s appointments to the emerging group at Leeds 
under Martin L\"ob. In the summer of 1967 he attended the NSF Summer 
Institute on Axiomatic Set Theory at UCLA, where his interest in large 
cardinals was greatly stimulated. His research work in set theory cented 
on partition cardinals, where he introduced a hierarchy of Erdos 
cardinals, and early work on forcing arguments in forcing. Back in Leeds 
he gave early graduate lectures on constructible sets and forcing, and in 
1974 published a classic North-Holland text: "Set Theory - an Introduction 
to large Cardinals" (Studies in Logic and Foundations volume 76). A later 
intermediate set theory textbook with D. Singh was aimed at a more 
elementary level.

In 1977 Frank was invited, by Robin Gandy and John Shepherdson, to become 
the first Hon. Secretary of the newly formed British Logic Colloquium, and 
he took on this responsibility with huge energy and efficiency, seeing to 
all the practical details of setting up the BLC, establishing its 
charitable status etcetera. At the same time he held senior administrative 
posts in the Leeds School of Mathematics.

He remained, throughout his life, an internationally respected figure of 
British logic.

Stan Wainer
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