A Universal Embedding Property of the RETs

?0. Introduction. Recursive equivalence types are an effective or recursive analogue of cardinal numbers. They were introduced by Dekker in the early 1950's. The richness of various theories related to the recursive equivalence types is demonstrated in this paper by showing that the theory of any countable relational structure can be embedded in or interpreted in these theories. A more complete summary is presented in the last paragraph of this section.