The growth and assembly of galaxies over cosmic time

"Galaxies are the "atomic units" for building the largest scale structures in the Universe. Understanding how they formed and evolved into the diversity that we see today is one of the central problems of modern astrophysics. Using a combination of theoretical insights, complex hydrodynamical simulations and multiwavelength observations, it has now become possible to paint a broad brush picture of galaxy evolution that is consistent with known physics and available observations. I will review the enormous progress made in the last decade driven by extraordinary volumes of high quality data from large surveys. I will also outline the problems that remain to be solved and how new observational techniques and better simulations can hope to solve them in the coming decade."