  This is the written version of the lecture on deep inelastic scattering and
related topics in QCD, delivered in the course of the XXVI International
Meeting on Fundamental Physics to an audience of young experimentalists. The
aim is fundamentally pedagogical. I review the theoretical setting of the
Altarelli-Parisi equations, discuss recent determinations of $\alpha_s$ from
deep-inelastic scattering and then move to the kinematical region explored by
HERA. In the way I mention some unsolved theoretical problems. I discuss low-x
physics and to what extent $\log{1/x}$ resummations are called for.
