The research problems and theoretical ideas described in this article are already open to observational study and testing with 8-10-m class telescopes and the Hubble Space Telescope, as we have discussed in the case of studies of quasar host galaxies, high-redshift galaxies, and black holes in galaxies. As the capabilities of the large ground-based telescopes improve (via infrared optimization and adaptive optics, for example), and when the Next Generation Space Telescope is completed, we will be able to study directly the relation of AGNs and galaxies over virtually the entire range of their evolutionary history. Similarly, the X-ray observatories AXAF and XMM will offer very significant new capabilities for the study of both the nature of quasars and AGNs and their evolution.
In the meantime, large-area, ground-based surveys such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey 3 and the 2dF 4 survey will increase the number of known quasars by more than an order of magnitude. We may expect that the combination of the new samples, the new observatories, and continued theoretical advances will answer many of the questions raised here.
Acknowledgements I thank Brad Peterson and David Weinberg for comments and suggestions on a first draft of this article. I am grateful to the Organizing Committee and the National Science Foundation (via grant AST-9529324) for financial support.
4 http://www.2dfquasar.org/ Back.