It is a great pleasure that the 25th meeting of our Graduate Working Group, which is being supported now in its 6th year by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, could become a significant international event. It is also gratifying to see this workshop as a harvest after 5 years of intensive work. The Graduate Working Group has seen a host of guest scientists who have visited in the framework of close collaboration, or gave lectures and seminars during the many previous meetings. This gathering of experts on galaxies, and particularly dwarf galaxies, represents a small milestone in the recent past of galaxy research at the Universities of Bonn and Bochum.
Until the late 70's, the investigation of dwarf galaxies was restricted to a few small groups. Although the Magellanic Clouds had been studied extensively due to their proximity, it took a while until the term dwarf galaxy became fashionable among astrophysicists. There are several reasons why dwarf galaxy research is one of today's fastest growing branches of modern astrophysics. First, the Magellanic Clouds have always been appreciated as the ideal astrophysical laboratory in which one can study all kinds of processes without being hampered by distance and line-of-sight problems. Second, since it was known early on that dwarf galaxies are so little evolved, their relevance to cosmology was recognized. Third, by virtue of their low mass, the evolution of their ISM and stellar populations can be studied in the absence of internal large-scale triggers like stellar bars or density waves. It is therefore not surprising that the past two decades have seen a rapidly increasing rate of related research projects and publications, accompanied by an ever increasing number of conferences dedicated to this subject, one of which is being reported in these proceedings.
While to the non-expert it might at first glance look as if dwarf galaxy research is a rather specialized field, a quick look at contemporary reviews on galaxy research demonstrates that understanding low-mass galaxies is of utter importance to also comprehend what is going on in more massive and, in particular, more distant ones. A prime example is the understanding of the faint blue galaxy population at redshift 0.4 to 1.0, which has experienced a further boom with the scrutiny of distant objects in the Hubble Deep Field. It is obvious that in order to understand stellar systems at large distances, it is all the more important (also for the cosmologists) to understand those just outside our door step!
Research on the Magellanic Clouds and other dwarf galaxies had been going on at the Universities at Bonn and Bochum for some time prior to the Bonn/Bochum Graduate Working Group. It was therefore quite natural to combine the experience gained in two small research groups in order to intensify this research, while at the same time establishing an educational programme in which graduate students could benefit for their own career, and contribute to the progress in a very proliferous field of research.
We are grateful to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for financing this Graduate Working Group, thus rendering possible this intensive educational and research programme in a very prolific and fascinating field of research. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Christian Brüns for his invaluable help in organizing this workshop. It has been (and still is) a great pleasure to work with the students in the Graduate Working Group. It is also their enthusiasm and diligence that, besides my natural endeavour in this field of research, ensures permanent motivation!
| First version: | 18th | August, | 1998 |
| Last update: | 08th | October, | 1998 |