A tribute to Frank P. Ramsey, 1903–1930

The celebrated paper [25] of Ramsey has stimulated an enormous study in both graph theory as surveyed by Burr [ 11 and Parsons [24] and the author [ 121, and other branches of mathematics as reported by Graham, Spencer, and Rothschild [9]. Most certainly “ramsey theory” is now an established and growing branch of combinatorics. Its results are often easy to state (after they have been found) and dificult to prove; they are beautiful when exact, and colorful. Unsolved problems abound, as reviewed in [ 131, and additional interesting open questions arise faster than solutions to the existing problems. This special issue of the Journal of Graph Theory dedicated to the memory of Frank P. Ramsey was stimulated by my 1980-81 sabbatical year at Cambridge University where I had the good fortune to hold an Overseas Fellowship at Churchill College as well as membership at Darwin College. During the year I was delighted to meet Mrs. Lettice Ramsey who kindly supplied me with the above photograph which she took of her husband in the Lake Country of England. I visited her at home in Cambridge where we had a cup of strong tea, and later we dined at Darwin Coflege. At her home she showed me box upon box of notes and papers of Frank Ramsey and invited me to pore through them. As they dealt mostly with philosophy, I had to decline. But who knows what further gems of original deep, creative, and important ideas would have come to light if only F.P.R could have lived long enough to polish and publish his motes. Surely there is material in these boxes for a doctoral dissertation on the history of philosophy. A vivid example of an entirely analogous phenomenon of finding a long lost paper in a box of notes will be published soon. It is the second paper of J.