Published in "The Hubble Deep Field", eds. M. Livio, S.M. Fall and P. Madau 1998

Abstract. Although it is just over a year since the data was made public, the HDF exposure has stimulated considerable progress towards our understanding of the faint galaxy population. I present a brief personal account of the history of faint galaxy studies culminating in the HDF, and describe what I consider to be the main highlights thus far from this remarkable image. The HDF has given considerable impetus to studies of galaxy evolution and this has led to the emergence of a convincing empirical framework. Further exploitation of deep HST images in conjunction with ground-based 2-D spectroscopy will assist in the physical understanding of the evolutionary processes involved.

Table of Contents

• INTRODUCTION
• HOW THE HDF CAME TO BE
• THE HIGHLIGHTS
• The flattening of the count slope N(m)
• The small angular sizes of the faintest galaxies
• The increasing fraction of irregular and multiple component systems
• The location of high redshift galaxies with modest star formation rates
• Constraints on the redshift distribution of the faintest systems
• THE UPSHOT
• WHERE NEXT?
• CONCLUSIONS
• REFERENCES