  This is the introduction to the collection of review articles "Exact results
on N=2 supersymmetric gauge theories". The first three sections are intended to
give a general overview over the physical motivations behind this direction of
research, and some of the developments that initiated this project. These
sections are written for a broad audience of readers with interest in quantum
field theory, assuming only very basic knowledge of supersymmetric gauge
theories and string theory. This will be followed by a brief overview over the
different chapters collected in this volume, while the last section indicates
some related developments that we were unfortunately not able to cover.
