After a period of initial confusion, we now seem to understand in some detail why a star like Sanduleak -69°202 gave rise to a supernova like 1987A. The detection of the neutrino burst produced at core collapse has confirmed basic ideas of Type-II supernova causality and energetics (without being able to distinguish prompt from delayed shock ejection). Constraints on the nature of the neutrinos themselves confirm or extend laboratory limits on, and conventional theory for, rest mass, magnetic moment, etc. The unusual early light curve and spectra turn out to be a natural result of core collapse when the star was compact and blue, after passing through a red, extended phase (confirmed by evidence for mixing and mass loss characteristic of red supergiants). Synthesis of about 0.07M of Ni56 (as was previously suspected in SNII's with exponentially tailed light curves) has been revealed by a similar light curve and by an infrared line, gamma rays, and hard x rays, all widely believed to reflect the presence and decay of Ni56 to Co56 to Fe56. A number of puzzles remain concerning unexpected variable soft-x-ray emission, a possible speckle companion, and evidence for extensive mixing, fragmentation, and filamentation. Most of the lessons still to be learned from 1987A probably pertain to the detailed (three-dimensional) structure and composition of evolved massive stars rather than to the basic physics of Type-II supernovae. © 1988 The American Physical Society.

A large majority of the physics and astronomy communities are now sure that gravitational waves exist, can be looked for, and can be studied via their effects on laboratory apparatus as well as on astronomical objects. So far, everything found out has agreed with the predictions of general relativity, but hopes are high for new information about the universe and its contents and perhaps for hints of a better theory of gravity than general relativity (which even Einstein expected to come eventually). This is one version of the story, from 1905 to the present, told from an unusual point of view, because the author was, for 28.5 years, married to Joseph Weber, who built the first detectors starting in the early 1960s and operated one or more until his death on 30 September 2000.

Radio astronomy began with one array (Jansky's) and one paraboloid of revolution (Reber's) as collecting areas and has now reached the point where a large number of facilities are arrays of paraboloids, each of which would have looked enormous to Reber in 1932. In the process, interferometry has contributed to the counting of radio sources, establishing superluminal velocities in AGN jets, mapping of sources from the bipolar cow shape on up to full grey-scale and colored images, determining spectral energy distributions requiring non-thermal emission processes, and much else. The process has not been free of competition and controversy, at least partly because it is just a little difficult to understand how earth-rotation, aperture-synthesis interferometry works. Some very important results, for instance the mapping of HI in the Milky Way to reveal spiral arms, warping, and flaring, actually came from single moderate-sized paraboloids. The entry of China into the radio astronomy community has given large (40-110 meter) paraboloids a new lease on life.