This bestselling textbook for higher-level courses was extensively revised in 1990 to accommodate developments in model theoretic methods. Topics include models constructed from constants, ultraproducts, and saturated and special models. 1990 edition.

Model theory investigates mathematical structures by means of formal languages. So-called first-order languages have proved particularly useful in this respect. This text introduces the model theory of first-order logic, avoiding syntactical issues not too relevant to model theory. In this spirit, the compactness theorem is proved via the algebraically useful ultrsproduct technique (rather than via the completeness theorem of first-order logic). This leads fairly quickly to algebraic applications, like Malcev's local theorems of group theory and, after a little more preparation, to Hilbert's Nullstellensatz of field theory. Steinitz dimension theory for field extensions is obtained as a special case of a much more general model-theoretic treatment of strongly minimal theories. There is a final chapter on the models of the first-order theory of the integers as an abelian group. Both these topics appear here for the first time in a textbook at the introductory level, and are used to give hints to further reading and to recent developments in the field, such as stability (or classification) theory.

The 1970s saw the appearance and development in categoricity theory of a tendency to focus on the study and description of uncountably categorical theories in various special classes defined by natural algebraic or syntactic conditions. There have thus been studies of uncountably categorical theories of groups and rings, theories of a one-place function, universal theories of semigroups, quasivarieties categorical in infinite powers, and Horn theories. In Uncountably Categorical Theories , this research area is referred to as the special classification theory of categoricity. Zilber's goal is to develop a structural theory of categoricity, using methods and results of the special classification theory, and to construct on this basis a foundation for a general classification theory of categoricity, that is, a theory aimed at describing large classes of uncountably categorical structures not restricted by any syntactic or algebraic conditions.

This volume is easily accessible to young people and mathematicians unfamiliar with logic. It gives a terse historical picture of Model Theory and introduces the latest developments in the area. It further provides 'hands-on' proofs of elimination of quantifiers, elimination of imaginaries and other relevant matters. The book is for trainees and professional model theorists, and mathematicians working in Algebra and Geometry.