Theory of Relations

Relation theory originates with Hausdorff (Mengenlehre 1914) and Sierpinski (Nombres transfinis, 1928) with the study of order types, specially among chains = total orders = linear orders. One of its first important problems was partially solved by Dushnik, Miller 1940 who, starting from the chain of reals, obtained an infinite strictly decreasing sequence of chains (of continuum power) with respect to embeddability. In 1948 I conjectured that every strictly decreasing sequence of denumerable …