was beyond the reach of our instruments and our minds. That changed dramatically in the 20th century. The advances were driven equally by powerful ideas—from Einstein’s general relativity to modern theories of the elementary particles—and powerful instruments—from the 100- and 200-inch reflectors that George Ellery Hale built, which took us beyond our Milky Way galaxy, to the Hubble Space Telescope, which has taken us back to the birth of galaxies. Over the past 20 years the pace of progress has accelerated with the realization that dark matter is not made of ordinary atoms, the discovery of dark energy, and the dawning of bold ideas such as cosmic inflation and the multiverse.