4. Galaxy formation

Abstract

This article surveys the literature from July 1981 to June 1984. It is neither possible nor desirable to refer to all papers on the subject, and accordingly only papers that are generally representative of some particular idea are explicitly mentioned. Galaxy Formation by its very nature has considerable overlap with other areas of cosmology such as the anisotropy of the cosmic background radiation, the question of the mass density of the universe, the nature of the large scale clustering, and detailed observations of galaxies. These are all topics covered by other reports to Commission 47 and the reader will therefore find only scant attention paid here to these important subjects.