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The centers of all nearby massive galaxies contain supermassive black holes weighing millions to tens of billions times the mass of the Sun. Even many local low-mass galaxies contain intermediate-mass black holes, a population critical for predictions of next-generation gravitational wave experiments. Recent observations with JWST have discovered a remarkably abundant population of supermassive black holes at cosmic dawn, offering new insights into the birth of quasars and the initial conditions for galaxy formation. Accretion of matter by central black holes power active galactic nuclei. The energy and momentum released during this process may strongly impact the evolution of their host galaxies and even their large-scale environment. I will summarize the critical developments over the past 30 years that have led to the discovery of the widespread existence and importance of black holes in galaxies, which is among one of the most important themes in modern astrophysics.

BIO

何子山 (Luis C. Ho), 美国艺术与科学院院士，美国天文学会会士。1990年获得哈佛大学的学士学位，1995年获得加州大学伯克利分校博士学位，1998作为终身天文学家加入美国著名卡内基天文台。从2014年起，他来华任职北京大学科维理天文与天体物理研究所所长，讲席教授，入选国家海外高层次人才引进计划。他担任Astrophysical Journal Letters副主编。

何子山教授是天文学观测方向的专家，使用地面和空间最先进的多波段望远镜从事黑洞和星系演化领域各方面的研究，并取得了众多开创性成果。他的研究方向主要包括黑洞吸积的物理过程，星系结构、动力学和恒星形成性质，以及发展观测和数据分析的技术方法。他已发表了840余篇学术论文，被同行引用超过8.4万次，H因子高达127。

Host: Di Li