Professor Lee Hartmann, Leo Goldberg Professorship in Astronomy, Inaugural Lecture

The common outcome of the collapse of a gas and dust cloud to produce a star is the formation of a remnant rotating disk which can form planets. Major advances in observational capabilities have led to new insights into the processes of star and planet formation, to the point where we may now be seeing planets in the process of forming. I will outline some of these recent advances, and discuss how improvements in computational resources are helping to interpret observations to better understand how planets form.