Our esteemed colleague C. V. Vishveshwara, popularly known as Vishu, turned sixty on 6th March 1998. His colleagues and well wishers felt that it would be appropriate to celebrate the occasion by bringing out a volume in his honour. Those of us who have had the good fortune to know Vishu, know that he is unique, in a class by himself. Having been given the privilege to be the volume's editors, we felt that we should attempt something different in this endeavour. Vishu is one of the well known relativists from India whose pioneer­ ing contributions to the studies of black holes is universally recognised. He was a student of Charles Misner. His Ph. D. thesis on the stability of the Schwarzschild black hole, coordinate invariant characterisation of the sta­ tionary limit and event horizon for Kerr black holes and subsequent seminal work on quasi-normal modes of black holes have passed on to become the starting points for detailed mathematical investigations on the nature of black holes. He later worked on other aspects related to black holes and compact objects. Many of these topics have matured over the last thirty years. New facets have also developed and become current areas of vigorous research interest. No longer are black holes, ultracompact objects or event horizons mere idealisations of mathematical physicists but concrete entities that astrophysicists detect, measure and look for. Astrophysical evidence is mounting up steadily for black holes.

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Preface. 1. The Black Hole Equilibrium Problem; B. Carter.2. Stability of Black Holes; B.F. Whiting. 3. Separability of Wave Equations; E.G. Kalnins, et al. 4. Energy-Conservation Laws for Perturbed Stars and Black Holes; V.Ferrari. 5. Gravitational Collapse and Cosmic Censorship; R.M.Wald. 6. Disturbing the Black Hole; J.D. Bekenstein.7. Notes on Black Hole Fluctuations and Back-Reaction; B.L. Hu, et al. 8. Black Holes in Higher Curvature Gravity; R.C. Myers. 9. Micro-Structure of Black Holes and String Theory; S. Wadia. 10. Quantum Geometry and Black Holes; A. Ashtekar, K. Krasnov. 11. Black Holes, Global Monopole Charge and Quasi-Local Energy; N. Dadhich. 12. Kinematical Consequences of Inertial Forces in General Relativity; A.R. Prasanna, S. Iyer. 13. Gyroscopic Precession and Inertial Forces in General Relativity; R.Nayak. 14. Analysis of the Equilibrium of a Charged Test Particlein the Kerr - Newman Black Hole; J.M. Aguirregabiria, et al. 15. Neutron Stars and Relativistic Gravity; M. Vivekanand. 16. Accretion Disks around Black Holes; P.J. Wiita. 17. Astrophysical Evidence for Black Hole Event Horizons; K. Menou, et al. 18. Black Holes in Active Galactic Nuclei; A.K. Kembhavi. 19. Energetic Photon Spectra as Probes of the Process of Particle Acceleration in Accretion Flows around Black Holes; R. Cowsik. 20. Black Hole Perturbation Approach to Gravitational Radiation: Post-Newtonian Expansion for Inspiralling Binaries; M.Sasaki. 21. More Quasi Than Normal! N. Andersson. 22. The Two Black Hole Problem: Beyond Linear Perturbations; R.H. Price. 23. The Synergy between Numerical and Perturbative Approaches to Black Holes; E. Seidel. 24. Cauchy-Characteristic Matching; N.T. Bishop, et al. 25. Astrophysical Sources of Gravitational Waves; B.S. Sathyaprakash.26. Gravitational Radiation from Inspiraling Compact Binaries: Motion, Generation and Radiation Reaction; B.R. Iyer. 27. Ground-Based Interferometric Detectors of Gravitational Waves; B. Bhawal. 28. Detection of Gravitational Waves from Inspiraling Compact Binaries; S.V. Dhurandhar. 29. Perturbations of Cosmological Backgrounds; P.K.S. Dunsby, G.F.R. Ellis. 30.Mach's Principle in Electrodynamics and Inertia; J.V. Narlikar.31. The Early History of Quantum Gravity (1916&endash;1940); J. Stachel. 32. Geometry in Color Perception; A. Ashtekar, etal. 33. C.V. Vishveshwara &endash; A Profile; N. Panchapakesan. Publications of C.V. Vishveshwara.