Stephen Hawking, the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, has made important theoretical contributions to gravitational theory and has played a major role in the development of cosmology and black hole physics.

Hawking's early work, partly in collaboration with Roger Penrose, showed the significance of spacetime singularities for the big bang and black holes. His later work has been concerned with a deeper understanding of these two issues. The work required extensive use of the two great intellectual achievements of the first half of the Twentieth Century: general...

This volume comprises lectures delivered at the First Equatorial School of Relativistic Astrophysics. It covers various topics related to observational and theoretical problems of galaxies, quasars and cosmology. The aim is to analyze current problems.

This volume comprises lectures delivered at the First Equatorial School of Relativistic Astrophysics. It covers various topics related to observational and theoretical problems of galaxies, quasars and cosmology. The aim is to analyze current problems.

The concepts of dark matter and the cosmic web are some of the most significant developments in cosmology in the past century. They have decisively changed the classical cosmological paradigm, which was first elaborated upon during the first half of the 20th century but ran into serious problems in the second half. Today, they are integral parts of modern cosmology, which explains everything from the Big Bang to inflation to the large scale structure of the Universe. Dark Matter and Cosmic Web Story describes the contributions that led to a paradigm shift from the Eastern point of view. It...

The book collects 29 papers which have been particularly influential in the development of accretion theory. As an introductory paper a recent review on the subject is reported. An extensive list of references closes the volume.