The theory of black holes and relativistic stars in general relativity was largely developed during the period from the mid 1960's to the mid 1970's. However, in recent years many important, new developments in this area have occurred as a result of a number of independent lines of research. These lines of investigation include: (1) Research associated with the `Grand Challenge` effort to study the details of black hole collisions by numerical techniques. (2) Analyses of the potential ability of LIGO and other gravitational wave detectors to probe detailed properties of black holes and neutron stars. (3) New evidence from the Hubble Space Telescope and other observations for the presence of black holes. (4) Theoretical analyses of the internal structure of black holes, which suggest that the `inner horizon` occurring in idealized models of black holes may become a null singularity of a relatively mild type for realistic black holes. (5) Further analyses of the Hawking effect and its analog in 2-dimensional theories, particularly with regard to the issue of whether purity of states is restored in the black hole evaporation process. (6) Numerous investigations in the contexts of classical general relativity, semiclassical gravity, quantum gravity, and string theory regarding the nature and origin of black hole entropy. To discuss these recent developments, a Symposium on `Black Holes and Relativistic Stars` will be held on the University of Chicago Campus on the weekend of December 14 and 15, 1996 (just prior to the Texas Symposium, also to be held in Chicago). The Symposium will consist entirely of two days of plenary lectures of approximately one hour duration each by V. Ferrari, J. Friedman, J. Hartle, S.W. Hawking, W. Israel, R. Penrose, M. Rees, R. Sorkin, S. Teukolsky, K. Thorne, R. Wald, and E. Witten. The Symposium will be dedicated to the memory of S. Chandrasekhar.
