A Tour of Franz Baader’s Contributions to Knowledge Representation and Automated Deduction

Abstract

This article provides an introduction to the Festschrift that has been put together on the occasion of Franz Baader’s 60th birthday to celebrate his fundamental and highly influential scientific contributions. We start with a brief and personal overview of Franz’s career, listing some important collaborators, places, and scientific milestones, and then provide first person accounts of how each one of us came in contact with Franz and how we benefitted from his collaboration and mentoring. Our selection is not intended to be complete and it is in fact strongly biased by our own personal experience and preferences. Many of Franz’s contributions that we had to leave out are discussed in later chapters of this volume.