Cecylia Rauszer
[From Studia Logica 53(1994).4, pp. 467-468]
Polish logic and mathematics has suffered an immense loss. On 13 May 1994 the death occurred of Cecylia Rauszer, professor in Warsaw University, an outstanding scientist of international renown, distinguished by extremely fine and valuable traits of character.
After graduating from Warsaw University in 1964 she started working as a instructor in the Chair of Mathematical Logic, of which I was head, in the Warsaw University Institute of Mathematics, and was for her whole professional life connected with that Institute. In 1971 she was awarded the Ph.D. degree on the basis of a dissertation of which I was supervisor. In 1977 she obtain venia legendi and became professor in 1991.
Her research interests and work were concerned with nonclassical logics. In her Ph.D. and venia legendi dissertations she developed a theory of Heyting-Brouwer logics: algebraic and Kripke-style semantics for propositional and first order versions of these logics and complete Hilbert-style and Genzen-style axiomatizations. She was also interested in intermediate logics and was working on Kripke-style and algebraic semantics for some classes of these logics. She was very active in the field of the mathematical foundations of computer science, in particular in research on logic for computer science applications. She developed a logic for proving functional dependencies in relational databases and proved that a standard axiom system of the calculus of dependencies is not independent. She was interested in nonmonotonic logics and was working on algebraic models of autoepistemic logic. Among her contributions to the theory of knowledge representation the most important is a logic for the the specification of uncertain knowledge and generation of decision rules from incomplete information.
She was being invited for lectures and seminars to many universities in Europe (Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Yugoslavia, Norway), USA, Canada, Japan, Brasil, Israel. She was visiting professor at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, USA (1985-1987). She was speaker at many international conferences on logic and theoretical computer science. She was a dedicated teacher, graduate advisor and Ph.D. supervisor. She was managing editor of Studia Logica and a member of Editorial Board of the Journal of Non-Classical Logic. She was a very active member of the Polish Mathematical Society, since 1991 president of the Warsaw branch of the Society. Moreover she was director of the Foundation of Polish Mathematics Development, co-organizer of the Polish Association for Logic and Philosophy of Sciences and vicepresident of Scientific Council of this Association.
Her great kindness, personal charm and strength of character which in most difficult situations gave her faith in their successful solution won for Cecylia Rauszer profound friendship and attachment of her colleagues and disciples alike.
She will always remain in our memory and hearts as a model of researcher and academic teacher fully dedicated to Polish mathematics and logic. Her passing away was a painful blow to all of us.
Helena Rasiowa
Bibliography of Cecylia Rauszer's works
last modfied 6.07.2005; designer and webmaster: Krzysztof Pszczola
