Supermassive Black Holes in Nearby Galaxy Centers

Abstract

Almost exactly 40 years ago, quasars were discovered by M. Schmidt [43] and others. Soon thereafter, Zel’dovich [50] and Salpeter [42] suspected that accretion onto compact objects, like black holes, provided the only efficient and plausible way to generate the required luminosities. Little later, Lynden-Bell [28] refined the picture which became to be known as the black hole paradigm for active galactic nuclei.