It was on February 5, 1963 (just 8 days before my birth) that Maarten Schmidt ran through the hallways of Caltech announcing that he had discovered the high redshift nature of quasars, then only recently identified in radio surveys. In the interim period our understanding of their place in the universe has gone from that of isolated, ultraluminous freaks of nature to crucial links in the birth and evolution of massive galaxies. This talk will be an overview of these very recent and dramatic developments.
*Note different location.