  In these lectures I review the standard hot big-bang cosmology, emphasizing
its successes, its shortcomings, and its major challenges-developing a detailed
understanding of the formation of structure in the Universe and identifying the
constituents of the ubiquitous dark matter. I then discuss the motivations
for-and the fundamentals of-inflationary cosmology, particularly emphasizing
the quantum origin of metric (density and gravity-wave) perturbations.
Inflation addresses the shortcomings of the standard cosmology, specifies the
nature of the dark matter, and provides the "initial data" for structure
formation. I conclude by addressing the implications of inflation for structure
formation and discussing the different versions of cold dark matter. The flood
of data-from the Heavens and from Earth-should in the next decade test
inflation and discriminate between the different cold dark matter models.
