This book contains a series of lectures given at the NATO Advanced Study Institute (ASI) "Structure Formation in the Universe", held at the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge in August, 1999. The ASI was held at a critical juncture in the development of physical cosmology, when a flood of new data concerning the large scale structure of the Universe was just be coming available. There was an air of excitement and would the standard theories fit the data, or would new ideas and models be re quired? Cosmology has long been a field of common interest between East and West, with many seminal contributions made by scientists working in the former Soviet Union and Eastern bloc. A major aim of the ASI was to bring together scientists from across the world to discuss exciting recent developments and strengthen links. However, a few months before the meeting it appeared that it might have to be cancelled. The war in the former Yugoslavia escalated and NATO began a protracted bombing cam paign against targets in Kosovo and Serbia. Many scientists felt uneasy about participating in a NATO-funded meeting in this situation. After a great deal of discussion, it was agreed that the developing East West conflict only heightened the need for further communication and that the school should go ahead as planned, but with a special session devoted to discussion of the legitimacy of NATO's actions.
Neil Geoffrey Turok is a South African physicist, and the Director of Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. His work has been in the area of mathematical physics and early universe physics, including the cosmological constant and a cyclic model for the universe.
Turok was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, to Mary (Butcher) and Latvian-born Ben Turok, who were activists in the anti-apartheid movement and the African National Congress. After graduating from Churchill College, Cambridge, Turok gained his doctorate from Imperial College, London, under the supervision of Professor David Olive, one of the inventors of superstring theory. After a postdoctoral post at Santa Barbara, he was an associate scientist at Fermilab, Chicago. In 1992 he was awarded the Maxwell medal of the Institute of Physics for his contributions to theoretical physics. In 1994 he was appointed Professor of Physics at Princeton University, then held the Chair of Mathematical Physics at the University of Cambridge starting in 1997. He was appointed Director of the Perimeter Institute in 2008.