Presented by Prof. Karl Glazebrook on 10th April 2015.

The Universe began in the Big Bang now firmly established at 13.7 billion years ago. But then what? How did the hot expanding hydrogen of the early Universe turn in to the magnificent tapestry of the Universe we see around us? In this lecture I will tell the story of the galaxies, the building blocks of our Universe and how modern observations from large telescopes on the ground and in space have literally let us see how the galaxies have grown up from small wisps to the beautiful structures in which we live today, and revealed their ultimate future.