Non-existence of universals for classes like reduced torsion free abelian groups under embeddings which are not necessarily pure

We consider a class K of structures, e.g. trees with ω + 1 levels, metric spaces and mainly, classes of Abelian groups like the one mentioned in the title and the class of reduced separable (Abelian) p-groups. We say M ∈ K is universal for K if any member N of K of cardinality not bigger than the cardinality of M can be embedded into M . This is a natural, often raised, problem. We try to draw consequences of cardinal arithmetic to non–existence of universal members for such natural classes. ∗I would like to thank Alice Leonhardt for the beautiful typing. The research was supported by the German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research & Development, Grant No. G-294.081.06/93 . Publication No 552. 2 Non-existence of Universals 3 Table of