Recent data indicate that almost all galaxies possess a supermassive black hole at their center. When gas accretes onto such black holes it heats-up and shines, resulting in the appearance of a bright quasar.
The earliest quasars are found to exist only a billion years after the big bang, and the properties of their X-ray and optical luminosity functions can be described in the context of popular models for galaxy formation. I will discuss recent theoretical work on both the nearest and the most distant supermassive black holes in the universe, including the use of quasars as probes of the reionization epoch (through the Lyman-alpha and 21-cm transitions of neutral hydrogen), the emission of gravitational radiation from black-hole binaries at high redshifts, the Brownian motion of black holes in galactic centers, the formation of stars near dormant black holes, and the dramatic radiative and hydrodynamic influence that quasars have on their host galaxies and the surrounding intergalactic medium.
**SPECIAL DATE**
Thursday, September 2nd
Seminar is to be held at 4:00 PM in the conference room
on the second floor of Dearborn Observatory
Refreshments will be served at 3:30
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