Thanks to Software Memories we learn about David Childs and his work on Extended Set Theory. I quote from the blog post:
“Way back in 1968, Childs wrote a paper outlining how set theory, relations, and tuples could be applied to data management.
And that’s where I did a double-take, because 1968 < 1970. Sure enough, Footnote #1 in Codd’s seminal paper is to Childs’ 1968 work. Indeed, Childs’ paper is the only predecessor Codd acknowledges as having significant portions of his idea.”
It seems that there was life before God Codd after all.
Managing organized complexity 