Dr. Emiliano Sefusatti (Trieste Observatory of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics) will present a historical introduction to cosmology and talk about dark energy in his talk. Dr.  Sultan Hassan from New York University, USA, will give a lecture on  key concepts in cosmology on July 7th.  

Title and abstract of Dr. Sefusatti's talk: 

From the birth of modern cosmology to the mystery of dark energy
I will review the historical evolution of the concepts that lead to the formulation of the cosmological principle and the observational and theoretical discoveries leading to the establishment of the standard model of physical cosmology in the XX century. I will overview how the Friedmann’s equation allow us to determine the energy content of the Universe, including a mysterious dark energy component, from measurements of the cosmological expansion. Finally, I will show how recent hints of a possible dynamical dark energy arise from observations of the statistical properties of the galaxy distribution at large scales.