  Present-day elliptical, spiral and irregular galaxies are large systems made
of stars, gas and dark matter. Their properties result from a variety of
physical processes that have occurred during the nearly fourteen billion years
since the Big Bang. This comprehensive textbook, which bridges the gap between
introductory and specialized texts, explains the key physical processes of
galaxy formation, from the cosmological recombination of primordial gas to the
evolution of the different galaxies that we observe in the Universe today. In a
logical sequence, the book introduces cosmology, illustrates the properties of
galaxies in the present-day Universe, then explains the physical processes
behind galaxy formation in the cosmological context, taking into account the
most recent developments in this field. The text ends on how to find distant
galaxies with multi-wavelength observations, and how to extract the physical
and evolutionary properties based on imaging and spectroscopic data.
