When I wasa child, growing up in South America, I often went camping in the wild and hence had direct access to the wondrous Southern sky; the Southern Cross was all mine at the time. Little did I know then that the study of the sky would take such a huge importance in my life, and that in the end astronomy and astrophysics would in many ways become my country and my religion. I have lived in several di?erent countries, and when asked my nationality, I am always very tempted to reply: astronomer. I started as a theorist, and my only dream in my youth was to spend nights thinking and...

Research and publications in the field of Astronomy have undergone dramatic changes in the last half-century. While activities just slowed down during World War II in the US and in Latin America, they were very strongly affected by the difficult conditions prevailing among the European belligerent nations. Half a century ago, re search activities were mostly confined to observatories (linked or not to universities) and usually separated from the teaching of physical sciences. Hence, directors of observatories played an important role in the choice of the research fields, and "schools" of...

Interest in statistical methodology is increasing so rapidly in the astronomical community that accessible introductory material in this area is long overdue. This book fills the gap by providing a presentation of the most useful techniques in multivariate statistics. A wide-ranging annotated set of general and astronomical bibliographic references follows each chapter, providing valuable entry-points for research workers in all astronomical sub-disciplines. Although the applications considered focus on astronomy, the algorithms used can be applied to similar problems in other...

This text reviews the changes brought about in the field of astronomy by the release of the Hipparcos catalogue. Chapters by leading experts detail the various approaches of one of the most challenging cosmological issues: the scale of the universe.