Molecular Clouds and Star Formation: Proceeding of the 7th Guo Shou-Jing Summer School on Astrophysics

This volume is composed of four major review chapters on the subject of star formation, written by foremost researchers in the field. Recent infrared and millimeter radio observations are respectively reviewed by Charlie Lada and Phil Myers, both of Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics. The theoretical work is reviewed by Frank Shu of UC-Berkeley on the gravitational collapse of dense cores in a giant molecular cloud to form sunlike stars, and by Bruce Elmegreen of IBM-Watson on the gravitational instability, leading to large-scale star formation. They have written at a level most suitable for graduate students or young researchers who want to develop their research interest in the field, with the most complete literature survey to date.