Edited by Jelle Gerbrandy, Maarten Marx
Maarten de Rijke, and Yde Venema



Welcome to JFAK, a collection of essays dedicated to Johan van Benthem on the occasion of his 50th birthday, on June 12, 1999. The title of the CD-ROM refers to Johan's initials: Johannes Franciscus Abraham Karel.


Johan van Benthem is professor of mathematical logic and applications of logic at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation at the University of Amsterdam, and Bonsall Chair of Humanities at the Department of Philosophy at Stanford University, where he is also affiliated with the Center for the Study of Language and Information.

Van Benthem has strongly advocated logic as an interdisciplinary science. His work brings together the humanities, social sciences and exact sciences, and his scientific interests and influence range from formal linguistics (generalized quantifiers, categorial grammar) and philosophical logic (modal and temporal logic) to mathematical logic (relation algebra, decidable fragments) and artificial intelligence (game theory).

Van Benthem plays a key role in a large number of national and international organizations: he initiated the European Association for Logic, Language and Information (FoLLI), he is a Council Member of the Association for Symbolic Logic, member of the Academia Europaea and the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, as well as Member of the Board of Directors of TARK. He serves on the editorial board of about a dozen international journals.

Johan van Benthem is an inspiring and innovative researcher who has attracted many young researchers. So far, nearly 50 PhD students have completed their dissertations under his guidance, many of whom have contributed to this CD-ROM.


To start exploring the contents of the CD-ROM, just click on the list of contributions. If you need help accessing the contents of the CD-ROM, please consult these pages, or send us an e-mail message at this address.

We would like to thank Marco Aiello, Carlos Areces, Paul Dekker, Christof Monz, and especially Martin Stokhof for their help in producing this CD-ROM. We are also grateful to Leen Torenvliet and Jan Wortelboer for essential technical assistance, and to Edwin van Haaren of Amsterdam University Press for his support and advice. But above all, we want to thank the overwhelming number of friends and colleagues of Johan that have made this project a success by contributing an essay, photos, or software.

Jelle Gerbrandy
Maarten Marx
Maarten de Rijke
Yde Venema