To commemorate the 300th anniversary of the publication of Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Stephen Hawking and Werner Israel assembled a series of unique review papers by many of the world's foremost researchers in cosmology, relativity, and particle physics. The resulting volume reflects the significant and exciting advances that have been made in these fields since the editors' acclaimed volume, General Relativity: An Einstein Centenary Survey (CUP 1979). Newton's immense contribution to the physical sciences is assessed, and its relevance to today's physics...

The 1972 Banff lectures attempted a systematic exposition of the ideas underlying recent developments in general relativity and its astronomical applications at a level accessible and useful to graduate students having some previous acquaintance with the subject. To our regret, it was not possible to include any printed record of Peebles' beautiful lectures on observational cosmology or of the many stimulating seminars on special topics contributed by the participants. What remains is nevertheless a reason- ably self-contained and compact introduction to Einstein's theory in its modern in-...