  Surveys with the Hubble Space Telescope find supermassive black holes (BHs)
of 10**6 to 10**9.5 solar masses in every galaxy that has an
elliptical-galaxy-like "bulge" component. BHs appear to be standard equipment
in galaxy bulges. At the 2000 June meeting of the American Astronomical
Society, two groups announced the discovery of a tight correlation between BH
mass and the global velocity dispersion of stars in the host galaxy bulge
(astro-ph/0006053 and astro-ph/0006289). Also, BH mass scales with bulge mass;
the median BH mass fraction is 0.15 % of the bulge mass. In contrast, BH mass
does not scale with disk properties. Pure disk galaxies - ones that lack a
bulge component - must have BH mass fractions that are much smaller than the BH
mass fractions in bulges. These results imply a close connection between BH
growth and bulge (but not disk) formation. Observations increasingly support
the hypothesis that the major events that form a bulge or elliptical galaxy and
the main growth phases of its BH - when it shone like a quasar - were the same
events. These and other results are leading to a profound change in how
astronomers view BHs. More than just exotica needed to explain rare active
galactic nuclei, they are becoming an integral part of our understanding of
galaxy formation.
