Gravitational lensing is by now sufficiently well understood that it can be used as a tool of investigation in other astrophysical areas. Applications include the determination of the Hubble constant, probing the dark matter context of galaxies and the mapping of the universe to the identification of otherwise invisible large-scale structures. Each chapter of the book covers in a self-contained manner a subfield of gravitational lensing, with the double aim of describing in a simple way the basics of the theory and of reviewing the most recent developments as well as applications foreseen in...

From June 7-9, 1995, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and the Max Plank Institut fiir Astrophysik (MPA) jointly held the Workshop on Spiral Galaxies in the Near-IR. This meeting took place at the ESO headquarters in Garching bei Miinchen, Germany. The weather waschanging, with the biergarten closed, but that did not stop 85 people from allover the world from attending the meeting. The three days were intensive, with talks and coffee and posters from 9 am to 6 pm, and very productive indeed for everyone. The topics covered the stellar populations of the Milky Way and other more distant...