ABSTRACT:
Throughout the history of extragalactic astronomy, we are constantly surprised when we push back the veil to uncover a more distant epoch of galaxy evolution. This is true now more than ever, as the advent of the Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope allows us to probe galaxies within a few hundred million years of the Big Bang. Initial results have shown us that galaxies in this epoch are vastly different than those we see around us, both in their appearance as well as in their stellar and gas compositions. I will describe my past and current work in this field, summarizing results on what the color evolution of galaxies tells us about the physical conditions in the early universe, with implications on the formation of the first stars and reionization. I will also describe my past work and future plans with the HETDEX survey, which will discover nearly 1 million Lyman alpha emitting galaxies at 2 < z < 3.5 in order to probe dark energy. However, the galaxies themselves are highly relevant to the z > 7 universe as Lyman alpha emitters at lower redshift exhibit similar properties to the most distant galaxies. Finally, I will present my vision for the future, both in space with HST and JWST, and on the ground, with Keck, ALMA and the TMT.