"The twentieth century witnessed the emergence of the disciplines of astrophysics and cosmology, from subjects which scarcely existed, to two of the most exciting and demanding areas of contemporary scientific inquiry. There has never been a century in which fundamental ideas about the nature of our Universe and its contents have changed so dramatically. This book reviews the historical development of all the keyareas of modern astrophysics, linking the strands together to show how advances have led to the extraordinarily rich panorama of modern astrophysics and cosmology, while many of the great discoveries were derived from pioneering observations, the emphasis is upon the development of theoretical concepts and how they came to be accepted. These advances have led astrophysicists and cosmologists to ask some of the deepest questions about the nature of our Universe and to stretch our ability to address them by advanced observation to the very limit. This is a fantastic story, and one that would have defied the imaginations of even the greatest story-tellers."--BOOK JACKET.pt. 1. Stars and stellar evolution up to the Second World War. --The legacy of the nineteenth century --The classification of stellar spectra --Stellar structure and evolution --The end points of stellar evolution --pt. 2. The large-scale structure of the Universe 1900-1939. --The Galaxy and the nature of the spiral nebulae --The origins of astrophysical cosmology --pt. 3. The opening up of the electromagnetic spectrum. --The opening up of the electromagnetic spectrum and the new astronomies --pt. 4. The astrophysics of stars and galaxies since 1945. --Stars and stellar evolution --The physics of the interstellar medium --The physics of galaxies and clusters of galaxies --High energy astrophysics --pt. 5. Astrophysical cosmology since 1945. --Astrophysical cosmology --The determination of cosmological parameters --The evolution of galaxies and active galaxies with cosmic epoch --The origin of galaxies and the large-scale structure of the Universe --The very early Universe.